


All or Nothing

by PTlikesTea



Series: All or Nothing 'verse [1]
Category: Brave (2012), Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2018-03-03 21:59:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 23
Words: 63,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2889410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTlikesTea/pseuds/PTlikesTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A badly injured princess floats into Arendelle's ocean and into Elsa's heart, trailing with her a country's worth of sorrow, strife and the ever-present spectre of death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

All and Nothing

Author’s note: I wrote it ‘cos I ship it, and because I wanted to write an epic worthy of the ship. Not much to say beyond that. It’s going to get grim and will likely stay that way so be warned.   
………  
Chapter 1  
………  
If you’d asked Elsa what brought her out onto the open water in the middle of the night in question, she wouldn’t have had an answer. On mild summer nights she frequently had trouble sleeping, and without any paperwork or delegation to occupy her time with she usually patrolled the castle restlessly. She rarely left the castle, unless it was to cross the courtyard or sit by the fountain watching the stars. 

That night, a perfectly normal night with a half-moon in the sky and a mild wind ruffling the tower pennants, something like a small, indistinct whisper drew her attention to the ocean. The waves were miniscule, the water like dark rippling glass clear as a mirror. The impulse hit her hard. She took so few risks with her powers, even now with the ‘incident’ long past… what could a little excursion hurt? Before she knew it, she was out of the castle and tiptoeing across the beach, looking around in case anyone saw. Not that anyone would have said anything, even if she had been seen, but old habits were hard to break. 

The first step onto the water tore an excited little giggle from her. When she’d ran across the fjord before she’d barely registered what she’d done, so consumed by her fear and panic, but deliberately freezing the water – for fun, no less – so she could walk across it was about as close to an act of rebellion as she was likely to get. The ice she made was only a few inches thick, and shifted as she moved her feet so that she didn’t so much step across the surface as glided. The brightest stars twinkled in the reflection of the water, and underneath the murk she spotted the flickering of fishes fleeing from her footsteps. 

She was half a mile out before she realized it, and stopped there to gaze at the moon and breathe in the sharp salty air. The cold refreshed her, blew the cobwebs from her brain as one of her advisors was fond of saying. The heat made her feel sluggish and irritable, the crisp marine breeze was the perfect medicine. She titled her head back, closed her eyes and filled her lungs with the stinging chill.

Suddenly, Elsa felt a presence tugging at her, a whisper on the wind. Half a mile out at sea, who could have been there? But sure enough, when she looked behind her, there was a small boat, caught in the spaces between the icicle stepping stones she had created. She hesitated, unsettled by its sudden appearance, though it looked to be empty. And yet, the pull towards the little boat felt almost physical, as though an invisible rope had been looped through her temple and was getting tighter. 

Slowly, she approached it. It wasn’t like any boat she’d seen made in Arendelle; it looked like the shell of some enormous insect, round and shiny-hulled and covered with a sheet of leather. All over it was carved with strange interlocking symbols. Elsa repressed a shiver; symbols could mean magic, and even a hint of magic not her own made her nervous.   
Nevertheless, she drew up beside the boat, pulled back the leather and peered inside. 

And even through her shock, horror and confusion, she felt a sensation wrap around her heart akin to burning. 

There was a girl in the boat. Or the remains of a girl. Curled up like a wounded animal, dressed in a tattered white gown and so pale the only part of her that didn’t blend in with her dress was the brilliant shock of red hair splayed out across the inside of the boat. Irregular dark stains across the front of the gown could only have been blood. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from her upper arm, and another from her calf. She didn’t appear to be breathing. 

Elsa let out a shuddering breath. 

“Oh, you poor…” she began, leaning over the boat, but she couldn’t finish. Not knowing what to do, she reached over to brush the girl’s hair away from her eyes. 

As soon as her fingers touched the girl’s skin, the girl woke with a pained gasp. Elsa let out a little scream and fell backwards, only stopped from falling clear into the sea by her panic conjuring a sheet of ice to break her fall. She clambered back to her feet and held the side of the boat, watching the very much alive girl take deep wheezing breaths and struggle to move. She was mumbling something high pitched and frantic, could have been her native tongue or just delirious rubbish for all Elsa could tell. 

Elsa reached into the boat to grasp the girl’s wrists, to hold her still. The girl’s eyes fluttered open and peered at her through her matted hair. 

“Stay still,” Elsa commanded with an authority she pulled from the very reaches of her being. Truthfully, she felt as helpless as the girl in the boat. “Don’t move around, you’ll hurt   
yourself. I’ll help you.”

It was impossible to tell if the girl understood what she was saying, but she stilled. She held Elsa’s gaze for a moment that seemed to stretch for hours. 

“So blue….” Elsa thought absently. 

Then the girl’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped further into the boat. Elsa held her wrists for a moment, feeling her thread pulse beat against her fingers, pondering   
the best course of action. 

And though common sense, which in Elsa’s head sounded an awful lot like Advisor Holm, dictated that she should leave the boat where it was until the coast watch could be sent to investigate it, she got behind the boat and pushed it to shore herself. 

…..

At dawn Elsa was watching the sun cast shadows over the hallway outside the guest room as she waited for the doctor to emerge when Anna came charging down the corridor in her usual excitable flurry. She was even more frenzied this morning, her hair sticking up like it was trying to escape from her head, wearing one slipper and no robe. She flopped into the chair beside her sister and gripped her shoulder as if trying to physically leech the information out of her. 

“Tell me everything!” she demanded, grinning eagerly. As with most important things, Anna missed the gravity of the situation entirely. 

“There’s not much to tell,” Elsa told her. “I found a boat, there was a girl in the boat, she’s injured, so I brought her back here and called the doctor.”

“Aw, come on! That can’t be all there is!” Anna moaned, tugging at her hair in frustration. “Where do you think she came from?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did she get injured?” 

“No idea.”

“Is she gonna be okay?”

“The doctor hasn’t said anything yet…”

“What were you doing out there anyway?”

“I….” Elsa hesitated. “I was getting some air.”

“You were, like, a mile out at sea!”

“Half a mile. And who told you that?”

“I heard the servants talking. Everyone’s talking about it.”

Elsa groaned and rubbed at her temple. So much for her peaceful little ocean stroll. 

“Did she look really bad?” Anna asked, with a concerned glance at the closed bedroom door. For all her awkwardness, she was a caring little soul. 

“I thought she was dead,” Elsa said quietly. “She looked dead.”

They sat in silence for a while, before Anna excused herself to get dressed. She promised to bring Elsa some coffee and pastries to maintain her vigil with. She’d been gone less than ten minutes when the doctor finally emerged. 

He was grim-faced and tired, wiping his hands with an iodine-soaked cloth. The front of his apron was splashed with blood and other fluids and Elsa couldn’t help staring as he removed it. She pulled him into her study to discuss the patient. 

“How much do you want to know, or will I just leave the report?” he asked her. As the royal physician, and the man who had delivered both princesses, he was used to speaking to the royal family as an equal. 

“Give me the basics, please. I’ll read the report later,” she said. 

“She’ll make a full recovery, but slowly,” he began. “She’s malnourished, of course, and dehydrated. I removed two broken arrows from her arm and leg, neither wound was infected so I suspect she was cleaning them with sea water. One other arrow wound on her torso, a near miss. Early stages of frostbite on her fingers and toes. Broken ribs already in the process of healing when she was put out to sea, lash marks across her back.” 

When he stopped his listing, Elsa let out a breath. 

“She was running from something,” he said with an air of the macabre. “And whatever it was, it got a few good licks in before she got away.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Well, at least she’s safe now.”

“Safe?” the doctor chuckled without humour. “ My queen, perhaps making an enemy of the person who did this would not be a wise idea.”

“I do not believe you’ve been added to my roster of advisors, Doctor,” she told him stiffly. He raised his eyebrow, but held his tongue. 

Just then, Anna reappeared with the coffee and pastries she’d promised, and the doctor took his leave. The sisters ate together, then Elsa claimed she was going to catch up on her sleep. Anna skipped away to find Kristoff, or Olaf, or just plain mischief. 

Before she left for her quarters, Elsa tiptoed into the spare room to check on the injured girl. 

The tattered dress had been cut off of her and replaced with a clean blue nightgown, which did a lot to make her look more alive. Against the starched white sheets the dark circles under her eyes stood out so much more, and the hollows in her cheeks. If one looked closely they could map out the veins under her skin. Her hair, though, was magnificent, freshly washed by whoever had dressed her and bright as flame, lying in long cascading spirals across the pillows. Before she even knew she was doing it, Elsa had threaded her fingers into the damp mass and was gently playing with it. 

The girl breathed deeply and turned her head towards Elsa’s hand. Elsa snatched it away as though she’d been burned, cheeks flushing pink, and took herself off to her bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2

All or Nothing  
Chapter 2  
Note on the languages used in this chapter, although they’re real languages for the purpose of this fic they are proxies for non-existent countries that exist in this universe. I’m afraid I’m just not clever enough to invent a new language just for this fic. 

…..

Over the next few weeks, while the injured girl recuperated in a drug-induced stupor, Elsa tried to keep her mind on affairs of state, with only cursory enquiries as to her health and what was being done to help her. Solveig was their best maid for this kind of thing, she’d nursed Anna through measles, pox, fever, fractured limbs and she’d taken care of   
Elsa once through a bone-shaking bout of influenza with quick but caring hands. 

“She’s no trouble, your highness,” Solveig had told her one evening when the queen caught her running back to the bedchamber with clean linens and a steaming bowl of water.   
“She thrashes about at night so I have to redo her bandages, and she can’t swallow too well, but she doesn’t make a fuss.”

Elsa nodded and sent her on her way, mentally adding a few figures to Solveig’s wages. 

Leafing through her papers, the words seemed to drift away from her and her thoughts refocus around the mystery occupying the spare bedchamber. The doctor was right, in a way. Arendelle was a merchant city first and foremost; its military was small and mostly dedicated to protecting their borders from bandits. They were protected by their trading allies and their considerably bigger armies. If the girl was running from someone who had a great force at their disposal, there could be trouble. 

On the other hand, the kind of person who would inflict such injuries on a young girl, even if she was some sort of criminal, how could she bring herself to take that person’s side? Or perhaps she wasn’t a criminal at all but a refugee. Arendelle had hosted the displaced before, when clashes between two of their allies had driven peasants from their homes and into neutral territory. Many of them had arrived at their gates injured, weeping, telling tales of family murdered by soldiers high with bloodlust. 

But, she reminded herself, it could be a feint. The debacle with Prince Hans had rattled her, left her second-guessing people’s motives all the time. Someone could look so benign and turn out to a monster, a wounded girl could be a highly dedicated assassin. Stranger things had happened, and now that her powers were public knowledge some countries were nervous about what it meant for them. Who was to say that this girl wasn’t a complicated means to a Trojan Horse plot to usurp the throne? 

The trolls had gifted her an object, to ward against ill intentions. A memory book, a book filled with blank parchment, but one drop of blood or a strand of hair would provide a portrait of the donor’s life and give an insight into their minds. She hadn’t yet used it, afraid if she brought it up it would create bad feeling. 

What clearer reason could she be given to use it now?   
…..

Solveig knocked on her door mid-afternoon, 3 weeks to the day since Elsa had come across the little boat. 

“Begging your pardon, your highness, but you asked me to tell you when our patient is better equipped to talk,” she said, clutching at her skirts. “She’s quite lucid now, though I can’t understand a word she says.”

Elsa’s stomach lurched, but she summoned all of her formidable dignity, thanked the maid and marched to the patient’s chamber. 

The girl was sitting slightly up as she entered, staring at the ceiling with a blank expression. She looked much better now, with some colour and plumpness in her cheeks, but she was still too pale and listless. The vibrancy of her hair just served to make her look bloodless. She looked up as Elsa made her presence known, straightening with some difficulty. Elsa held out a hand to stop her, and she slumped back with a light sigh of relief. 

Elsa placed herself delicately in the chair beside the bed, with the girl’s eyes nervously scanning her every move, and addressed her in her own tongue.

“Kan du forstå hvad I siger?”

The girl just blinked. Elsa tried the languages of her neighbouring countries. 

”Können Sie verstehen, was I sage?”

“Vous comprendrez ce que veux dire I?”

“Si può capire che cosa sto dicendo I?”

Nothing. The girl now knew Elsa was trying to communicate but shook her head to each language she tried, and she was rapidly running out of the ones she knew. Finally, almost as an afterthought, she tried Angolsi. 

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The girl’s head shot up almost violently, curls flying everywhere. Elsa started, despite herself. 

“Yes,” she replied. 

“You speak Angolsi?” Elsa almost whispered, conscious that gossipy maids could be walking by. 

“Yes, but not too well,” the girl answered. 

Elsa was relieved. From the singsong lilt of her accent it was clear Angolsi wasn’t the girls’ first language. Angols was a large country with a fearsome reputation for making war, and Elsa had learned the language as a precaution though Arendelle had historically had no contact with them. They were landlocked and far away enough to not be considered a threat. Still, her father had sent their royal family extravagant gifts from time to time to keep them on side, just to be safe. 

“Where am I?” the girl asked in halting Angolsi. Elsa ceased her pondering and fixed her with her most formidable look. 

“You are in the sovereign state of Arendelle,” she answered. “I am Queen Elsa of Arendelle. And I have yet to learn your name, so let’s begin with that.”

For all that she was a stranded foreigner in a strange land in the presence of the queen of said land, the girl showed no signs of being intimidated by her. Elsa soon discovered why. 

“Merida,” she answered quietly. “Princess of Clan Dunbroch.”

A princess. Elsa’s mind reeled. Every moment seemed to deepen the quandary she was facing. 

“But that was before,” the girl continued. “I am nobody now.”  
…..

They spoke long into the night, as the awful story of how the former Princess Merida drifted into Arendelle in such a sorry state came out piece by piece. She related it dispassionately, as though it had happened to someone else. It was an unpleasant tale, to say the least, and though Elsa listened and only interjected to offer words her guest couldn’t think of and kept her face blank, after she left the bedchamber she went straight to her office and sat there for a long time, shaking. 

It began with an Angolsi Duke who had travelled to Dunbroch campaigning for the hand of their princess. Merida’s people were Ceilts, a secretive race who inhabited harsh northern lands and defended their borders so ferociously that only whispers of their existence had made it to Arendellian ears. The princess had just turned down three of her fellow Ceilts for marriage, and they looked on the outsider with suspicion. 

Duke Augustus Warrick was forty-nine years old, and had already married and buried two young wives and claimed their lands in his stead. Merida found him unsettling to be around, and was put off that he had travelled so far to seek her hand and yet didn’t speak a word of Gaelic, her mother tongue. Her father disliked him because he’d heard his reputation as a covetous man from humble beginnings who left a trail of dead men with every rise of his station. And her mother disapproved of the way he looked at her, ‘like a dog looking at a man’s dinner plate.’

They declined his offer, and the Duke left amiably enough, wishing the royal family well as he took his entourage away. They thought no more about it, although Merida herself remained uneasy and nervous for seemingly no reason at all. 

Half a year to the day after the Angolsi man had departed, they were invited to a feast to celebrate the birth of a son for an old ally of the Dunbroch Clan, Clan Machblair. Merida hadn’t wanted to go, probably sensing from the summons that something was off about the invitation. Her father had laughed off her fears on the basis that after seven daughters ‘that randy old goat Machblair’ deserved to celebrate finally getting a boy to carry his name. 

It was a trap, of course. The old goat had been promised high-ranking Angolsi husbands for his daughters by Duke Warrick as a reward for securing the princess, and through her the Dunbroch crown. The king was shot full of crossbow quarrels from men perched in the rafters, for no-one was brave enough to face him in true combat. The queen’s head was struck from her shoulders as she ran screaming to her dying husband’s side. 

Merida had managed to break loose in the confusion that followed her parent’s death, fighting her way through the men sent to secure her with a battle-ax and using a serving platter as a shield and scaling a tapestry to escape out of a window. She knew the surrounding forest well enough to make her way back in the blackest of night to Dunbroch, where she raised the alarm. She instructed every man, woman and child in the castle gather anything they needed to survive and flee as far north as they could. 

Her own horse, the one she had left in the stables to travel by carriage to the feast, she gave to her childhood nursemaid. This woman was entrusted with the lives of Merida’s younger siblings, the princes, along with her warrior husband to protect them all. They had been the hardest to convince to leave, the nursemaid dithered and fretted and panicked and the boys clung to the princess’ skirt and refused to let go, until Merida spelled out exactly what Warrick would do to them when he caught up. 

“He wouldn’t kill me, he needed me to get the throne,” Merida told Elsa as though she were commenting on the weather. “But the princes are the heirs to the throne, he’d have had their heads hanging from the doorway soon as he got through the gate.”

In the end, the nursemaid’s husband had scooped them all up and swept them away. Two of the boys were crying out for her as they left, one tried to escape his protector’s arms to run back to her. One by one, and with most in tears begging the princess to come with them, the castle’s occupants disappeared into the dark of the forest. In the distance, the light from the torches of Warrick’s approaching army were rapidly blinking closer to Dunbroch.   
Merida’s final act before Warrick blustered into the courtyard was to cover every room in the castle with pitch and straw and set it all ablaze. He found her there, watching the flames roar out of the windows consuming all of its valuable innards, and laughing.   
…..

Merida couldn’t put the next occasions in an accurate timeframe, as she said the days and nights bled into each other. Warrick’s first order was for her to be whipped publicly and for Dunbroch’s villagers to watch, hoping that even if Merida herself didn’t give up the location of the princes that the villagers would be intimidated enough to do it on her behalf. The princess didn’t utter a word, and her stoicism was matched by her people.   
He left her tied to the rack overnight as a warning, but that failed when an elderly farmer crept to her side to offer her water and cover her with a blanket. The man was hung from a tree in her line of sight the next day, but that night a young woman repeated the farmer’s actions. She too was hung, and she too was replaced the next night by the tavern keeper. Warrick realized then that he’d run out of countrymen to rule over if he kept hanging them, so he moved Merida into the tower of the gutted castle away from the rustics. 

His next plan was to starve her into submission, interspersed with occasional beatings with a club when his anger became too much for him to bear. He was at least careful not to touch her face, as a bloodied bride would reflect badly on him and he was already losing the war of public opinion both in Dunbroch and with his peers back in Angols. She continually spurned him both in his efforts to wed her and his efforts to find out where she’d hidden her brothers. Finally, he made a threat that she refused to divulge to Elsa, and she agreed to marry him. 

She addressed the townspeople of Dunbroch on the day before she was due to wed, in Gaelic. To any man who could understand rudimentary Gaelic the princess was merely informing them of her engagement and her abiding love for her intended by way of a romantic poem in the old tongue. Truthfully, she was instructing them to flee northbound while the Angolsi men were distracted by the wedding by way of a code hidden in the lines of the poem. It was an old trick, seldom used but well-known in Dunbroch. 

The wedding day itself passed her in a blur. The Angolsi men drank heavily and made crude insults towards her family and her land. Her new husband pawed at her as though she were a tavern wench. She took the blunt knife from the dinner table and dug it into the wood of the chair she was sitting on to keep from screaming. By the end of the meal, she’d cut a furrow so deep it nearly went straight through. 

The village women had begged an audience with the princess on her wedding day and Warrick, being in a good mood, granted it. They presented her with a gift so humble it made the wedding guests laugh cruelly, but Merida’s sharp eyes saw it for what it was. A wedding bouquet of pink valerian, scutellaria and St John’s Wort. All powerful sedatives, especially when mixed together. There was a message written on the binding of the bouquet, hidden in the spirals of the drawn symbols, which told of a boat that had been built for her waiting in a cave at the southernmost cove to spirit her away when she made her escape. 

Of course, when the feast ended and she went to her bedchamber amid ribald jeering, Warrick knew from the moment she handed him the goblet of wine that it was drugged. He threw it across the room in a fury, tore her dress away at the shoulders and bit and sucked at her body as though he was trying to tear off chunks of her flesh. This, however, was what she had counted on, for she hadn’t drugged the wine at all. She’d spread the sap from the ground flowers across her chest and torso instead, and the first five minutes of their wedding night ended with Warrick collapsing into a table. 

The noise alerted the guards, who began breaking down the door, otherwise she would have smothered Warrick where he lay. Instead she pulled her dress back on and climbed out of the window. By the time she reached the base of the tower the alarm had been raised, the walls were being manned by archers and she was being searched for. Even so, she scrambled up the outer wall and down the other side before she was spotted. 

Merida picked up her skirts and fled as fast as she could, but a red-haired girl in a white gown on a clear moonlit night was as clear a target as one could get, and when they shot at her they found their mark. Desperate, she threw herself into the river and let it carry her for three miles until it spat her out in the shallows. Blessedly, it was only a half-mile to the cove that held the promised boat, and when she found it she used the last of her strength to push it out to sea and climb in. She stayed conscious for a single day and night, scrupulously cleaning her arrow wounds and drinking rainwater before falling into a black sleep. 

And when she next awoke, her hand was being held by a woman made of ice. 

…..

“That’s….quite a story,” Elsa said, for lack of anything else to say.

Merida said nothing, just stared at the ceiling. Elsa wanted to offer some words of comfort, some assurances to this poor creature, but her duties as a queen roared their way to the forefront of her mind. 

“I must have some proof that your story is true, for the security of the realm,” she said.

“I don’t have any proof, I’m afraid.” Merida told her. “I burned most of the proof.”

“I don’t require much. Just a strand of hair, if you please.” 

Merida turned to look at her then, eyes narrowed. Then she shrugged. 

“Take what you want.”

The Princess plucked three strands herself and handed them to Elsa, who wrapped them in a strip of linen and stood to leave. But before she did, Merida called out to her. 

“Your majesty? If it pleases you…”

“Yes?”

She hesitated, as though the words themselves were painful. 

“When I am recovered, I ask that you make me a servant in your kingdom. I am strong and willing to work hard in your employ.”

Elsa felt the burning behind the words as keenly as if she’d spoken them herself. Princesses were raised to keep their pride as royals at the very core of their being, and to have to ask for help in this way was excruciating for them both. 

“We shall see,” Elsa said, and swept out of the room, unwilling to look at her any longer.


	3. Chapter Three

All or Nothing

Chapter Three

…..

Got a wee bit caught up with other fics, trying to write an original work that’s going to be a sort of twin of this work and real life stuff. But I’m having a lot of fun playing around in the fandom and it looks likely to stay that way, so I’ll try to update more often.

…..

Merida recovered her faculties well enough to be up and walking, Elsa was told, and she had to wrestle with the decision as to what should be done with her. Sending her to the refugee compound was out of the question, no matter what she said she was still a princess. At the same time, she hadn’t a penny to her name and not even the clothes on her back, the ones she’d arrived in having been burned long and ever ago. She couldn’t be allowed to wander freely around the kingdom, they still had to confirm that her story was true, and Elsa hadn’t been able to bring herself to use the hair strands she’d been given. She was afraid of what she’d see.

Eventually, she gave a decree that Merida be allowed to remain in the castle as a guest of the crown. They opened some unused guest chambers near the central towers and moved her there, and while she was free to explore the castle itself and the grounds, she was forbidden to leave without an escort. She explained this to Merida in person, as nobody in the castle besides Anna spoke any Angolsi, and she nodded along solemnly.

There wasn’t really any need to put restrictions on Merida, however; she seemed wholly uninterested in leaving the castle, or indeed her own chambers. She spent some time in the towers, Elsa knew, because she could see the towers from her office and she saw her sitting on the ledge sometimes staring out at the ocean. She rarely spoke to anyone, rarely smiled, never laughed. She seemed lost in despair.

The castle staff were lit up with gossip. They called Merida ‘the little red ghost’ and swapped shifts to try and get a glimpse of her, they traded information greedily. Elsa caught two chambermaids giggling outside of her bedroom, not even trying to be quiet. Her advisor would have told her to hold her tongue, so as not to be fuelling more salacious gossip, but she couldn’t contain her anger.

“That girl is a guest of the crown. You will treat her with the same respect you would treat me or Princess Anna, “ she told them, deliberately pulling the temperature around them down a few degrees.

“Yes, your highness,” one of the maids stammered, white as milk.

“Please accept our apologies, your highness,” the other said, bowing so low she nearly fell over.

“I want you to inform the rest of the staff that I don’t want to hear anyone talking about a ‘ _little red ghost’_ or they’ll be forced to find a new place of work. I trust you can spread that information for me.”

When she mentioned the nickname, both maids went from white to scarlet. They murmured their acquiescence and hurried away, probably to work harder than they’d ever worked before.

Elsa knew it wouldn’t stop the gossip, but they’d be more discreet about it.

…..

She kept her distance from Merida, except when it was necessary. She couldn’t understand why, but being around her was uncomfortable, and Merida seemed to feel similarly. She wore her pain so clearly it could be felt in waves. Elsa’s only experience with pain was her own, and she couldn’t have offered any comfort even if she knew how. For all that Elsa found the nickname offensive, Merida truly was like a little ghost, haunting the castle and tiptoeing on the peripheries of her vision.

It was Anna who stepped in to change all that, though. Initially she’d been hyper-aware of her own awkwardness when meeting new people and avoided Merida out of shyness, but perhaps memories of her own loneliness growing up in the castle drove her to act. One afternoon, clutching an Angolsi phrasebook and a basket of pastries she’d lifted from the kitchen, she approached Merida where she was sitting in the tower and chattered away at her about nothing for almost four hours. Elsa saw all this from her office, Anna babbling away and rifling through the book while Merida just nodded along, baffled.

But they became fast friends after that. Merida was probably just glad of some distraction, and Anna was delighted to have a girl to talk to who wasn’t her sister (Elsa, try as she might, was still quite stiff and formal even in Anna’s presence). Their chats were farcical to watch, more like a long confused game of charades than anything else. Anna’s grammar was awful, and she kept mixing up basic words. Elsa once came across Anna and Kristoff trying furiously to explain something to Merida with a lot of flapping and hand-wringing.

“Elsa! You need to help us!” Anna called to her as she passed by. “I just introduced her to Kristoff and it’s all gone wrong!”

Sure enough, Merida was frowning at Kristoff and slowly backing towards the door.

“What did you say to her?” Elsa asked.

Anna rifled through the book and spoke dreadful, garbled Angolsi. Merida’s frown deepened. Elsa sighed heavily.

“Anna, you just told her Kristoff is a horse that sells children.”

Elsa smoothly detailed the error to Merida, and introduced him properly while Anna cringed in the corner. Once she understood what had happened, Merida laughed with relief. It was a small laugh, barely a chuckle really, but enough to show she wasn’t completely lost.

As the weeks passed and summer became autumn, Merida was often found in Anna’s company, being dragged around the castle to whatever Anna thought she needed to see or leafing through picture books in the library. Grateful as she was to Anna for taking their refugee under her wing, Elsa couldn’t help but feel a little stab of jealousy for their camaraderie. Even having lost everything, Merida had the full attention of another girl while Elsa was so often alone.

…..

August brought a heatwave that Elsa was loathe to interfere with, except to add extra ice to the stores in the kitchens. All the windows were thrown open and people wore as few clothes as they dared, almost everyone was short-tempered and sulky. Anna’s condition was put down to being irritable with the heat. She complained about her head hurting, and took more naps than usual.

(Merida, at this time, spent almost all of her time in the towers where it was cooler. Anna had declared it boring and left her to it.)

The rash wasn’t noticeable until it had been there almost two weeks, at which point it had spread to her face and made a butterfly-like pattern across her cheeks and nose. She fainted at breakfast, burning hot with fever, and upon stripping her to give her a cool bath they discovered the purple-red rash all over her back, stomach and chest. She was put to bed, and the doctor called, but he hadn’t seen anything like it before.

Just a day later, a maid who had been serving breakfast collapsed and was discovered to have the same spreading rash. Within three days, five of the kitchen staff had it. The doctor ordered them quarantined in the south wing and all the linens in the castle boiled and the surfaces scrubbed.

Anna was steadily getting worse. She was delirious, calling out for her mother and father, Kristoff, Elsa, even Olaf at times. She couldn’t sleep, her muscles spasmed with pain and any food she was given came back up within minutes of eating it.

To anyone that encountered her during that time, Elsa was the epitome of a cool, controlled leader. The threat of this strange new plague was terrifying, but she handled the quarantine measures with grace and efficiency. She sealed off the castle and everyone in it, herself included, to prevent the spread of the plague. She brought in surgical protective wear for the staff at great expense and kept the household calm and reassured.

In private, she was a mess. She barely slept with worry. She couldn’t bring herself to visit Anna’s sick bed, so afraid she was of what she’d see. After so many years of isolating herself away from her beloved sister, to have her so cruelly snatched away when they’d just begun to reconnect was something she wouldn’t survive willingly. She spent the nights locked in her office, slumped across her desk, weeping.

…..

After one particularly bad night, Elsa found Merida leaving Anna’s bedchamber with a small harp she’d found somewhere. Needing something besides the plague to talk about, she asked her where she’d found it.

“I found it at the back of the library,” Merida answered. “It helps her sleep.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Elsa told her, because it was. “But you should be wearing protective clothing in there, or you’ll get sick too. Please remember that next time.”

Elsa turned to go, until Merida said something that stopped her in her tracks.

“Oh, I already had it when I was little.”

Elsa spun around and grabbed Merida’s shoulders so hard she winced.

“You had it? _You’ve seen this before?”_ Elsa gasped.

Merida was in severe danger of having that look of confusion etched permanently on her face.

“Yes? We all had it. Everyone gets it when they’re children,” she said, shrugging off Elsa’s grip. “Is this really the first time you’ve seen it?”

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Elsa told her. A slow warmth was blooming in her chest; here was a way to possibly save Anna, and the rest of the country with her.

“Huh, no wonder she’s so sick…” Merida mumbled.

“Is there a cure?”

To her horror, Merida shook her head.

“No, you just have to wait for it to leave on its own. And give them honey in hot water to help the throat swelling. Although….”

“Although what?”

“There’s a herb we use, it cleans the blood or something. But I don’t know if it grows here….”

Elsa let go of her shoulders, only to grab her hand and drag her down the hall to her office.

“You’re going to find out,” she told her.

…..

Elsa wrote up a document to allow Merida to leave the castle with Kristoff to look for the herb, but before she left they called in the doctor to describe everything she knew about the plague. Elsa translated to the best of her ability, both Merida’s statements and the doctor’s questions, and it took all night. Three of her advisors insisted on being present, occasionally huffing and whispering amongst themselves.

Merida’s people called the plague _sruthan loiscneach,_ roughly translated as river burn. It was caused by the bite of a type of larva that lived in stagnant water and passed from person to person by bodily fluids. The symptoms presented more severely in some people than others, but it was all round agreed that it was best to get it in childhood. In adulthood, it could cause blindness, limbs lost to amputation and eventually death (Elsa’s stomach clenched as she translated this part.) The Ceilts treated it with hot water and wild honey, boiled mead and the mystery herb Merida was unable to describe properly in Angolsi.

Kristoff had been pacing impatiently at the door, and when they were finally done he whisked Merida away without even a passing word to anyone. Elsa couldn’t fault him; he was probably the only person in the kingdom as worried as she was herself. When she saw them leave through the castle gates, she slumped in her chair and let out a long sigh.

“Your highness?”

She bit back another sigh. The doctor was leaving, but the advisors were staying.

“We have been talking….” Chancellor Makkenon began.

“I had noticed,” Elsa said, sourly.

“We believe it is unwise to put so much trust in what this ‘princess’ says. We still haven’t verified her story. And we don’t believe it is prudent to trust her with the lives of our people. This herb she’s looking for could be anything.”

Elsa threw her hands up.

“Do you have any other solutions? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my sister is on death’s door and nobody else has any idea what this thing is!”

“That in itself is suspicious, your highness,” Chancellor Heino said. “If this disease is as common as she says, why has it not been encountered here before? And why did it appear only after our mysterious visitor arrived here?”

Elsa fixed him with a stare that, with less control, would have frozen him on the spot. As it was, the temperature in the room plummeted.

“I don’t like what you’re implying, Chancellor,” she bit out. “But judging purely by efficiency standards, I’m sure there are faster ways of murdering the crown princess than infecting her with a disease she may still recover from.”

The advisors huffed some more and left, but what they said lingered in her mind long after they left, and long after Merida and Kristoff returned with the herb they’d been looking for, soaked to the skin and obviously exhausted.

The herb was tested, and distributed to the infected staff once they were sure it was safe, and finally mixed into an elixir for Anna. The staff recovered within two days, but Anna remained bedridden and delirious for a further two weeks.

One night, so plagued with doubt she couldn’t sleep easy, Elsa followed the distant plucking of the little harp to Anna’s room. She didn’t go in, not wanting to disturb Anna’s rest, but peeked through the half open door.

Anna was sprawled sideways across the bed, cold compresses draped across her forehead and arms. Merida was sitting on top of the covers, strumming away gently, clearly bored out of her skull. She’d been there since lunchtime.

“Can you sing that song again?” Anna mumbled in Arendellian, grabbing at Merida’s arm.

“I don’t know what that means,” Merida told her in Angolsi.

Anna groaned, the fever having driven all of the Angolsi out of her head. She starting humming a tune off key, discordantly.

“Oh. Okay.”

Merida changed the tune she’d been plucking to something higher and sweeter. She began to sing softly in Gaelic, a simple melody that lilted beautifully. Her voice was clear as a summer bird’s, and Elsa was transfixed.

Anna groaned happily and threw her aching head on Merida’s lap, which didn’t phase her in the slightest aside from a single missed string pluck. The song was a lullaby, and it had the intended effect. Anna was soon sleeping soundly. Merida didn’t even try to move her, just put the harp down and crossed her arms to wait for her to wake up.

Elsa tiptoed away then, her heart conflicted. She could understand the reservations her advisors had, she’d be a fool not to see that they made sense. But every instinct screamed that this girl was not a threat.

And that left only one way to know for sure.

The book. The hair.

The truth.

 

……

The lullaby Merida sings is ‘Seoithion Seo Ho’ a song that doubles as a warning against fairies stealing your children.


	4. Chapter 4

**All or Nothing**

**Chapter Four**

**…..**

I’m going to put a few heavy trigger warnings on this chapter, it will get graphic as relates to Merida’s situation prior to escaping to Arendelle. If you think it might be a bit much, skip this chapter.

Also, if you like the fic it would make me very happy if you would leave a small review. Reviews keep me writing when I feel unmotivated.

…..

The advisors, as opposed to doing what was in their job description, refrained from advising Elsa so much as pushing her into making decisions they thought were prudent, and it didn’t help that they all had different opinions. The plague, though considerably less serious now that they had a remedy and a cause but not a source, was blamed on everything from keeping Merida in the castle with her foreign spores to the refugee populace practicing their religious rituals near the river to malevolent troll magic.

It was none of those things, as Elsa found out.

Three days after Anna had fully recovered and was out gallivanting again, a doctor came to her with a jar full of the larva Merida claimed was the cause of the plague.

The man seemed nervous as he placed the jar on her table.

“You’re certain that little thing is the cause, then?” she asked him.

“Without a doubt, your highness,” he answered.

“How can you be sure?”

“I’ve been working in the Reinemont region for a number of years. I was working there when I received word of your troubles,” he began. “This ailment is quite common there.”

Reinemont was a swamp, not quite part of Arendelle or its neighbouring districts and disowned by all of them. The residents spoke a patois of many different languages blended together and they lived in poverty, eking out a living with very little contact with the surrounding countries. It made sense if the disease was common there for Arendelle not to have heard of it.

“So it is a swamp disease. But why did we get it here? We don’t have any swamps in our borders,” she asked.

“Well,” the doctor began, shuffling and averting his gaze. Elsa grew suspicious. She wasn’t going to like this, she could tell.

“Reinemont has been flooding a lot lately. More than usual. The banks have been bursting into the river. And once they drain away, they leave a lot of standing water. It’s a perfect breeding ground for these creatures, and they’ll have already been washed into the river with the floodwater.”

The air around them took on a chill as the dots were connected in Elsa’s mind. A week before she got sick, Anna had gone to the river looking for water lilies to paint and frogspawn to collect on one of her _recapture-my-lost-childhood_ jaunts.

“Why now? Why is this happening now? Surely if the banks were going to burst they’d have done it before?” she asked.

“There’s a lot of extra water flowing into the swamp these days,” the doctor said quietly. “It’s coming from the North Mountain.”

_Oh God!_

The remaining evidence of her coronation outburst was still there, now trickling down the side of the mountain in the heatwave. She’d conjured up so much ice during that time, covered the mountain in frozen water, and then just left it there when she came back down.

Her negligence had nearly killed her sister, and could have taken a good slice of the population with it. It was sheer luck that someone familiar with the disease happened to be nearby.

 If her advisors heard about this, there would be uproar. She could have hugged the doctor for bringing it straight to her. Instead, she thanked him, promised to have the surplus water removed and gave him a large cart of supplies to bring back to Reinemont.

Once he was gone, she allowed herself the indulgence of crawling under her desk and sobbing for an hour, before she tidied herself up again to go about fixing the mess she’d caused.

…..

She’d been putting it off for long enough. And with the next task in her agenda sure to get the advisors’ backs up, now that the plague crisis had been dealt with, she needed all the security she could get.

She still had the three hairs Merida had given her, wrapped in the cloth and sitting in a drawer in her room. The memory book was locked in the South cloisters, which only she and Anna had the keys to.

It glowed faintly from its pulpit as she entered the room and locked the door behind her. The trolls had shown her how to use it, but she hadn’t used it since that first time. The vision it showed her had been innocuous, a day in the life of a troll, but she’d experienced it as if she’d been there right beside the troll in question. This would be far more difficult.

Bracing herself, she dropped one of the hairs into the book. The hair wound itself into the blank page and reshaped itself as a series of words, and all around Elsa the world began to melt away and reform into another place, another time.

The room that she was standing in still bore scorch marks climbing up the walls, and a smoky scent in the air. There was sparse furniture, a bed with a thin blanket on it, a small table with two low stools and a tapestry frame by the window. That was where Merida was sitting, weaving a tapestry with dead-eyed focus.

She looked awful, worn out and beaten down. Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes were blackened with exhaustion. Her mouth was set in a grim line as she worked, hunched awkwardly over the frame. Elsa knew she couldn’t see or hear her, that this was a construct of the book, but the urge to go to her side to offer some comfort, even a little, was overwhelming.

There was a light tapping echo from below that gradually got louder, until Elsa realised they were approaching footsteps and that they were in a tower garret. Merida heard the footsteps at the same time as Elsa did; her whole body tensed up and for a moment she looked ready to kill, but then her face sank into an expression of careful neutrality. Elsa recognized that expression, it was one she was well-practiced in herself.

There was a click of a key turning the lock and the door swung open. The man who entered the room with a basket he set down on the table was richly dressed in purple and crimson with silver embroidery, objectively handsome with a trim beard and moustache. He was an older man, though youthful in his stance and pleasant in his face. But there was something indefinably _off_ about him, a sense that his easy smile and warm body language were a cover for a man looking to root out the weaknesses in an enemy. Elsa could feel the hatred rolling off of Merida, though her expression remained dispassionate. This, then, was Duke Warrick.

“Sit with me, my lady,” he said in Angolsi. “We have much to discuss.”

She got up from where she was with difficulty, holding herself stiff as though she was in pain. Elsa remembered the lash marks, the account of her broken ribs. She could detect a little satisfaction in Warrick’s eyes as she struggled to the table to sit with him, and she hated him as much as Merida did in that moment.

“You must be hungry,” he said to her when she was seated on the opposite side of the table from him. He poured some wine into a goblet and set some bread and cheese before her. “How long has it been? Three days? Four maybe?”

Merida didn’t speak, or touch the food. She picked up the goblet and sipped delicately. Elsa had to admire her restraint; she defied this man every way she could.

“We’ve not been able to find your brothers. Your people have been even less forthcoming than you have been,” he said.

“It’s a very large country,” she told him. “They could be anywhere.”

“If they were my brothers, I would be concerned for their safety. But you are not?”

She shrugged. “They’re strong boys. They can take care of themselves.”

He chuckled, but there was no humour in it, and his eyes glittered angrily.

“I am running out of patience, my lady. Your people are as stoic as you are, and I fear that if I mistreat you any further I will finish you off. And neither of us want that.”

“You don’t want that. I think you should kill me now, and be done with it.”

A gauntlet had been thrown down. Elsa wanted to applaud her, and almost did. To show such insubordination in the face of an enemy was something most princesses could only aspire to.

“I think not,” Warrick said grimly. “What honour is to be had in killing a young girl?”

“You have no honour,” she told him, showing anger for the first time. “If you had honour, you would have challenged my father for the crown in fair combat as we have done for centuries. You knew him to be the better man so you defeated him with trickery. And even now you keep me locked up and weakened so you can vent your fury on me. You’re a coward. I’d rather be dead than be your queen.”

Warrick’s fists clenched on the table, and Elsa feared he would launch himself across the table and throttle her. Merida had no such fears; she started tearing small chunks from the bread and eating them.

“I will offer you this one last chance to comply. If you do not agree to my terms, there will be no going back.”

He rose, to stand behind her and wind his fingers through her hair. He crushed the curls in his fist, perhaps imagining it was her throat.

“You will marry me, and sit beside me as my queen to quell your people’s tempers. You will bear me sons, at least three I should think. As soon as my heirs have grown and you can give me no more, you will be permitted to live out your days in peace, away from me if that is your wish.”

Now he let go of her hair and pressed his thumbs into her shoulder blades, whereupon she barely supressed a shout of pain.

“If you refuse me, I will have you bound in the stable to be used for the pleasure of any man who wishes it. I will go first, as is my right as your king. Then my soldiers. They miss the wives they left behind in Angols. And I promise you that any child you conceive of these unions will be left to die in the gutter and their bones picked at by the dogs.”

Elsa knew that looking through someone’s memories would be unpleasant. She hadn’t known it would make her feel this sick inside. Warrick released the princess’s shoulders, and she slumped forward with a gasp of relief.

For an awful moment, and despite knowing where Merida would end up, Elsa thought she would refuse. Until Warrick added to his threat.

“And if you still insist on this stubbornness, I will repeat these circumstances with one girl from the villages every week until I have an heir.”

Merida composed herself. Despite the horror of the threat, her face remained impressively devoid of emotion.

“I will do what I must to safeguard my people. I’ll marry you.”

Warrick smiled, the smile of a man who has stolen something and gotten away with it.

“I am glad you’ve finally seen sense. I will make the arrangements. And as a special treat, for being so co-operative, I’ve brought you a visitor. I’ll send her up.”

He was gone then, the threat lingered in the air like a bad smell. Elsa felt a raw pain in the pit of her stomach. Merida clutched the table and shook, with her eyes screwed shut until the tremors passed.

The door opened again, and a tiny grey-haired woman shuffled in. Merida recognized her, and started to shake all over again.

“Oh no, no, you need to leave!” she shouted at the woman. It was Gaelic, but Elsa could understand it through the magic of the book.

“Whist, child, I’m stuck here as much as you are,” the old woman said, sitting across from her.

“You can’t help me. They kill anyone that tries to help me. Don’t throw your life away.”

“I’m dead tomorrow anyway, princess,” the woman said. “I’m a heathen, they say. Me gallows are built and they’ll burn my bones after.”

“They can’t do that,” Merida said, looking close to tears. “You’ve not done anything.”

“Not to worry. I’ve lived a long life, the land can take my bones now and I’ll happily allow it. But that is not your fate, my dear. You’re not meant for him. You’re not his and you never will be.”

“I agreed to marry him. I had to.”

“Marry him you might, but he’ll not have you. I’ve seen your fate,” the woman said, leaning closer to her. Her voice took on a deeper tone, the voice of generations. This was a magic woman. Power hummed all around her.

“You will be given a way out, and you must take it. Your people will survive in the wilderness and you will leave these shores. You will make a powerful ally and return a hundred times stronger, and your legacy will live on long after you have met your end.”

The witch put her hands on Merida’s shoulders and smiled kindly.

“The wisps chose you as one of their own, they will light your way. You are strong. You will endure.”

The guards were coming up the stairs to drag the witch away. Merida clutched her arms, perhaps wondering if she could, somehow, protect her. But the witch pulled away, pressed a hurried kiss to the princess’ forehead, and was whisked away to await her death.

_“Cha d’dhùin doras nach d’fhosgail doras,”_ was the last thing the witch said as the vision crumbled around Elsa and she was back in the cloisters, alone. The words lingered in her head for hours after.

_No door ever closed but another opened._

…..

The knock on her office door was hesitant. Elsa bid her enter, and Merida complied, looking somewhat worried.

“Have a seat, please,” Elsa gestured to the chair in front of her desk.

“Is something wrong, your highness?” Merida asked her.

“Not at all. Why would you think that?” Elsa responded. Truthfully, she was starting to tire of everyone but Anna tiptoeing around her. Even if she had been short-tempered lately…

“The maid you sent for me was upset about something. I didn’t know what she was saying but it didn’t sound good.”

Elsa sighed, and rubbed her temples.

“I may have been a little more stern with the staff than usual, but that’s nothing to do with you. I have something I need to discuss with you.”

She took out the documents she’d drafted with the advisors, over several hours. In the native dialect of Arendelle, they’d insisted, so Merida couldn’t understand it.

“You have done Arendelle a great service, and the crown in particular. I have no doubt that my sister would have died had you not correctly identified the plague for what it was,” she began, sounding more formal than she really wanted. “This document marks your place as a citizen of Arendelle, by way of a term of service. It’s a military honour, but for the purposes of this document it’s been rewritten.”

Merida looked baffled. Elsa continued, in simpler terms.

“You’ll have a permanent place in the royal household, as well as an allowance to spend on whatever you wish within reason. A seal is being made for you, you can use it at the markets to charge your bills to the royal coffers. And you are free to travel within the kingdom unescorted, but if you wish to leave the country you must inform us first. I just need your signature.”

Merida picked up the document and scanned it for a while, frowning. Elsa was somewhat disappointed; she’d hoped it would make her happy.

“Are you sure about this? I didn’t do that much,” Merida said finally.

“You did more than enough. This plague could have been disastrous, but we caught it in time,” Elsa responded. Anyone else would have been clamouring for recognition. Not Merida.

“Can’t imagine your advisors were too happy about this.”

Of course, there it was. Nobody understood the particular pain of having to recognize a good work through the lens of diplomacy better than a fellow princess who had been trained in such things from birth.

“They weren’t,” Elsa admitted, sighing. “But I convinced them. Eventually.”

Hesitantly, she brought up the subject she’d been trying not to think about, but she felt it had to be said.

“I’ve confirmed your story. You are who you say you are, I know that for certain.”

Merida looked up sharply. It wasn’t quite fear in her eyes, but something like it…

“I am sorry,” Elsa continued. “For what he did to you. And your family. You have a home here, for as long as you need it.”

Merida swallowed, and averted her gaze.

“Thank you, your highness.”


	5. Chapter Five

All or Nothing

Chapter Five

…..

To the people who reviewed the previous chapters, thank you so much. I have limited time to write these days but knowing someone’s looking forward to the next chapter helps me make that time.

Note: I’m taking some liberties with animal and husbandry training here, but in a world of magical rock people and spectre guides, I think it’s safe to say the normal rules don’t apply as much.

Also, a point of headcanon for me as a person who is from a Gaelic country and familiar with its history, the rules that Queen Elinor pushed on Merida in the film bore more of a resemblance to French gentry than Gaelic. Gaelic history has a far-reaching background of fierce female warriors and most women were expected to be able to defend their homes in the absence of their menfolk. Hence I think Elinor was from a French proxy and raised in a French court, and actually pretty ignorant of the reasons why Fergus would have taught Merida to wield her own weapons.

…..

The allowance Merida had been given for her services to the crown was a generous one, usually given to widows and the adult children of men lost in military service. It wasn’t unusual for a woman to give in to a little of the madness (and perhaps grief) and spend the first allowance wildly on gowns, jewellery and expensive gifts for their friends.

Merida did buy some clothes, but Elsa recognized Anna’s hand in that; they were from Anna’s favourite dressmaker and tailored to Anna’s tastes. Left to it, Merida wouldn’t have thought of it at all and carried on wearing the hand-me-downs she’d been given since her arrival. For a long time, the money assigned to her remained in the royal coffers, untouched.

When she finally did buy something of her own accord, Elsa was deeply exasperated by it. A longbow and several arrows. Elsa only found out because she found her on the shooting range with Anna, teaching her to aim.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get me in trouble with my council,” she said in Angolsi as she approached them. She wished it hadn’t come off quite as scolding as it did, because both Anna and Merida frowned.

“I beg your pardon, your highness,” Merida retorted. “But if I don’t keep up my practice, I’ll be no good for my return home.”

“ _Come on,_ Elsa!” Anna wheedled, in Dellian. “She’s really good! And who knows when it’ll come in handy?”

“Arendellian women, particularly of the noble classes, are not expected to know how to handle weaponry. We are a peaceful nation,” Elsa addressed Merida, ignoring Anna’s contribution.

“Gaelic women are taught to be prepared for everything,” Merida responded. “I’ll peace-bond the arrows if it please you, your highness.”

Peace-bonding meant little at the speed an arrow was generally shot at, but she appreciated the gesture and left it at that.

The second purchase she could not ignore so readily. A caged falcon, bought from an Eastern merchant and bred to carry messages. She also bought a small aviary to keep it in the towers and started training it straight away over distances.

“She won’t be ready to carry a message for at least two months, and I wouldn’t send her out in winter,” Merida explained when Elsa brought it up with her. “And I’m training her to respond only to Gaelic.”

“That’s not the point,” Elsa said, irritably. “I’m trying to convince my council that you’re not a spy. You’re not making it easy.”

“I’m doing all of this right under your nose, surely that’d make me a rubbish spy?” She was holding the bird on her arm as they spoke, feeding it bloody chunks of raw meat.

“You’d be sending messages in a language we can’t understand. There’s not a scholar in this country or any of our neighbours who has even a passing understanding of Gaelic,” Elsa told her, trying to keep the stern tone out of her voice. The last thing she needed was Merida getting defensive.

“I’d translate the messages for you, but you couldn’t know if I was being truthful.” She shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t know what to do to satisfy you. I can’t go home without knowing if I’m going to step right into my enemy’s hands. And I need to find out where my brothers are. It’s been three months, anything could have happened and I have no idea.”

Merida was doing her best not to look forlorn, but her eyes held such pain Elsa had to look away.

“I could translate the messages myself, I have a way, if you would give them to me after you’ve written them,” she suggested. “I need you to give me a strand of hair.

Merida’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ve asked me for that before,” she asked. “What do you do with the hair?”

Elsa swallowed. How much should she really say? Even the advisors knew little about the book’s capabilities….

….but then, she was asking to look directly into Merida’s mind. She had a right to know.

“I have a book, gifted to me by powerful friends to help me rule this kingdom,” she said. “ With a strand of hair, or a drop of blood, I can see inside a person’s mind and live their experiences as they did. That is how I validated your account of your escape to this country.”

Aside from turning very pale, Merida took the explanation well.

“That’s….” she began shakily, searching her mind for the words she wanted in Angolsi. “That’s blood magic. Isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is,” Elsa responded.

“Are you a _bandraoi_ , then?”

“I don’t know that word.”

“A magic woman. I don’t know the Angolsi for it.”

“Yes. I suppose you could call me that.”

Elsa wondered if she should reveal her ice powers at this time, since they’d gone undetected by Merida as far as she knew, and with this talk of magic when would be a better time? But in the end she decided against it. Merida gave her the hair, and Elsa took it without another word. When she wrote her first letter to her homeland, Elsa translated it and found it utterly benign.

But once she got to the part of the letter where Merida begged for news of her brothers, whether they were alive or dead, and who was looking after them, she pulled herself out of the book before she could finish and spent the rest of the evening burying herself in work, trying to forget the desperation she felt as keenly as though it came from her own heart.

…..

The nights got darker and colder, and since the bird (Lua, she had named her) had been sent on her first oceanbound journey, Merida kept odd hours. Most nights would find her in the tower looking out at the horizon, waiting for Lua’s return. Elsa would see her, a flash of crimson at the periphery of her vision, through the window of her office. Lua returned three times, with only the letter she’d been sent with.

She had taken to sitting on the ledge of the tower window with her legs dangling over the side, which tugged on the protective part of Elsa’s mind until one night she couldn’t stand it and marched up to the tower to tell Merida to stop it.

“I don’t care how good your grip is,” Elsa said when Merida argued. “Bring up a chair if your legs are tired. One stiff breeze will turn you into a red stain on the courtyard.”

“Half the time I don’t know I’m doing it, it just happens,” Merida admitted, sheepishly. “But I’ll try to stop.”

“Please do,” said Elsa. “If we do have to scrape you off the courtyard, it’ll be taken out of your allowance.”

That got a rare laugh from Merida, and Elsa felt strangely proud.

But not three nights later, just past the midnight hour, Elsa was finishing up some documents when she caught the flash of red out of the corner of her eye and turned to see that she was sitting on the ledge again.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake…” she grumbled, sweeping out of the room and up the tower steps.

By the time she bustled into the tower Merida had gotten down and was standing in the tower with the returned falcon, but Elsa’s anger hadn’t abated one little bit.

“I have asked you…” she began sternly, but stopped when it became apparent that Merida wasn’t listening to her, because the letter she was unwrapping from the falcon’s leg was written on hide rather than parchment, and had an interwoven seal on it.

“This is Lord Dingwall’s seal,” Merida said breathlessly. Elsa wasn’t sure if Merida even knew she was in the room with her. Her hands were shaking as she cracked open the seal and scanned the letter.

“Well?” Elsa piped up after a long stretch of silence. “Is it good news?”

“It’s great news,” Merida said. Elsa wanted to remind her to breathe. All of a sudden she let out a joyful shout.

“It’s the best news!” she cried. “The boys are on Cava! It’s Dingwall’s territory, he’s got them squirreled away safe!”

“Ah. Well, that’s excellent….”

“Cava’s almost impossible to get to unless you know the area well,” Merida continued, pacing around the room as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. “They couldn’t be in a better place. Maudie’s there with them, she says they got away without a scratch.”

It was like a great weight had been lifted off of her. Elsa watched Merida’s whole demeanour change from a sullen, sombre young woman into a whirl of energy. Her smile was so wide Elsa couldn’t help smiling too.

“Thank the Gods,” she whispered, lifting her face to the night sky.

In her enthusiasm, she’d forgotten to reward Lua with food, and the falcon was starting to keen mournfully. Elsa gingerly took some meat from the covered bucket and fed her.

“That is wonderful news, I’m glad for you,” Elsa said warmly, supressing a shiver as the falcon gulped down the meat. “You must have been worried…”

Elsa turned back around to find that Merida had gone still as stone, with a hand clamped over her mouth and tears streaming down her face. The letter was clenched in her hand as if she was afraid it would be snatched away from her. Elsa realized then just how worried she had been for her brothers. So worried she’d been living as a person almost dead inside. The letter had brought her back into full, screaming life and the floodgates had been opened.

Barely aware of what she was doing, and regardless of the fact that she’d hugged just three people in her life and only one of those recently, Elsa closed the distance between them and drew Merida into her arms, pressed against her heart. Merida shook and sobbed there for what seemed like an eternity while Elsa stroked her hair and held her, awkwardly hoping it would be over soon. But Merida had supressed her grief and worry for so long and it was finally making its way out of her, and Elsa was glad to hold her while she sorrowed.

Finally, Merida sniffed, wiped her eyes and pulled away.

“Sorry,” she said, gesturing at the front of Elsa’s bodice. “I got….stuff all over your dress.”

“I’m the queen. I can afford a new dress,” Elsa chuckled.

“Or you can take it out of my allowance,” Merida laughed shakily.

For all that the tears soaking the front of her dress were turning cold in the chilly night air, Elsa felt a warmth spread through her as the princess smiled at her and she smiled back.

…..

After the letter and the outburst that followed, Merida was like a different person entirely. She spent less time on her own in her chambers or the towers and actively sought out Anna to spend time with. She laughed, loudly and often. She explored the kingdom and spent hours at the marketplace talking to the merchants who understood Angolsi, to the point that they asked about her if they hadn’t seen her for a while.

She asked Elsa to recommend a tutor so she could speak Dellian, and Elsa obliged with the man who had taught Anna and herself growing up. When they’d met and Merida claimed that her Angolsi wasn’t good, Elsa had dismissed it as a princesses’ breed of humility and she was right to do so; Merida’s Angolsi was almost fluent, and the tutor proved she had a good ear for Dellian too. While she couldn’t quite grasp the grammar right away, she was able to read it well within a few weeks. It made communicating with Anna far easier, and Anna thankfully gave up the Angolsi she was so awful at.

The last of the summer heat was finally fading into memory, and Anna and Merida spent more time outdoors enjoying what was left of the sunshine while Elsa finished up her documents. She was looking forward to the late autumn and winter months; they brought a well-earned rest from paperwork and diplomacy.

Anna knocked on her door one night, looking worried. Elsa worried too when she saw her; very little rattled her blithe sister.

“Are you all right?” Elsa asked her.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Anna replied, biting her lip and glancing around. “It’s just….”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Can we talk girl talk for a while? I don’t know who else to ask.”

“Girl talk? I don’t understand….” Elsa said, confused. “Of course, I’m a girl so…”

“When did you stop growing?” Anna blurted out.

“ Excuse me?”

“You know….” Anna cupped her hands in the space around her bodice. “ _Growing.”_

“I….what? Why would you….”

“Like, I know you’re only two years older but is there still time for me to get bigger?”

Elsa held up her hands to stop her talking, but Anna kept on regardless.

“I don’t remember that much but I don’t think you were much smaller when you were my age, but that means you _did_ grow a bit and we’re pretty much the same size now so if mine do get bigger I’ll be bigger than you…”

“ **Anna.** Stop.”

Anna quieted down and smiled sheepishly at Elsa, clutching at her skirt.

“Where did this come from? Why are you worried about….that… now?” Elsa asked.

“Well, Merida and I went to the lake today, we went swimming ‘cos it’s probably the last swim we can get before next spring,” Anna explained. “And I guess I never noticed before because the only girl I used to be around was you and the maids, but while we were swimming I got a good look and she’s like out to _here!”_

Elsa very much doubted that Merida’s bosom was quite the size Anna was describing with her hands stretched out in front of her, but to think on it further was to think about Merida’s bosom and compare it to other bosoms Elsa was familiar with, and that was something she really didn’t want to do at that moment. She rubbed her forehead and groaned quietly.

“I know, right? It’s not fair, she’s not even eighteen yet!”

And Elsa groaned again, because _that_ was a little nugget of information that she hadn’t known before, and it made things even more complicated.

“Anna,” she began. “You will get nowhere comparing yourself to other girls. You are beautiful, and you will stay beautiful whether your bosom grows or not.”

“You have to say that, you’re my sister!”

“Yes. I’m your sister. As your sister, I can confirm we come from good stock. Mother was considered one of the most beautiful women across the five Delles. I’m happy to say you take after her.”

Anna smiled, mollified.

“But mother wasn’t that big either, as I recall,” she said after a moment.

“No, she wasn’t,” Elsa retorted. “And she still managed to marry, have two children and carry on living a normal life. It didn’t hinder her in the slightest.”

“Fine, fine,” Anna whined. “I’m worried about nothing. I can’t help it, I have no frame of reference! Merida’s my first girl-friend, and we barely talk! It’s still really weird to me.”

Elsa bristled a little internally at being dismissed as her sister’s friend, but she stifled it. It wasn’t her fault they didn’t grow up with a sense of togetherness, nor Anna’s.

With a few more assurances, she shooed Anna from her office and turned back to her paperwork. But she found herself quite incapable of banishing the thought of bosoms from her head entirely, and called down to the kitchen for a decanter of wine.

…..

The first snows began to fall and the merchants packed up their stalls to travel to warmer climes, and Elsa was finally able to stay out of her office for several hours a day. She was still beholden to her queenly duties, but they now involved talking to her townspeople, hosting festivals and seeing to the winter stores.

Merida didn’t send the falcon on any journeys while the snow was thick, but still kept up her training. She showed Elsa once how Lua could be taught to track a person or an animal with different click signals.

“In a pinch, you can get them to fetch you a rabbit,” she explained. It baffled Elsa, because in Arendelle the food had always been provided for her and she’d never be expected to fetch her own. Arendellian gentry didn’t even hunt, as a rule.

One night, she found herself back in her office again late at night. One of the border kingdoms had reaped a bad harvest and were looking to trade furs for grain, but were offering a poor price. Elsa was tasked with drafting a letter that asked for a better price but didn’t insult their neighbour. It was difficult, and it was keeping her up late.

A maid brought her supper to her desk, and she picked at it. One of the valets brought a pot of coffee to her unbidden, and she barely noticed. Indeed her attention wasn’t taken from the letter until she caught sight of the flash of red at the border of her vision and realized that Merida was up late too, seeing to her falcon. She smiled at the thought of the princess sleepily feeding Lua bloody chunks of meat; it was a task she could easily have given to a servant while the snow rendered Lua housebound, but Merida preferred to do it herself.

When the coffee had been half-drunk, she felt a tingle in her fingers and thought her circulation was off from sitting for so long.

When the coffee was three-quarters drunk, she felt sluggish and confused, and dismissed it as a lack of sleep. She waited for the caffeine to kick in and drank more when it didn’t.

It wasn’t until she finished the coffee and realized she couldn’t stand up, and was losing the feeling in her hands and arms, and the numbness was making its way up her neck, that she knew she was in danger.

She tried to get out of her chair, was going to bang on the window to alert Merida, the only person she knew was awake at that time, but she flopped onto the ground with a loud crash.

“Your highness? Is everything okay?” a voice called from outside.

_Thank goodness_ she thought.

But when the door opened, it was the valet who had given her the coffee. He didn’t seem surprised to see her sprawled on the floor, and when he pulled in a wheeled tray covered with cloth she knew she was in trouble. She tried to call for help, but her throat was closed to all but air. She could do nothing but blink and breathe.

The valet wrapped her in an old cloak and shoved her onto the bottom of the tray, covered her with the cloth and wheeled her quickly out of the office, out of the hall and into the night air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

All or Nothing

Chapter Five

…..

Thank you all very much for the reviews and kudos that have been left on this fic. I managed to get out to see the new _Cinderella_ lately along with _Frozen Fever,_ and thankfully there was nothing there that I can say isn’t canon for this fic (as if it matters, but I’m a bugbear for accuracy.)

Someone made the fairly obvious _Game of Thrones_ parallel, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a huge influence, but my main influence comes from the same place as G.R.R. Martin’s: European and Celtic history. The differences between Arendelle’s royal bloodline and Merida’s will become more obvious as time goes on. Elsa’s situation here is based on something that may have happened to Mary Stuart in the 1500’s.

Also, I’m half thinking of putting this on Tumblr. What do you lot think?

…..

It was astonishingly easy for Elsa’s kidnapper to smuggle her out of the castle, easier than it should have been. He was well-known, having worked there for over a year and made friends with most of the roster of staff. He exchanged small talk with the castle guards with the paralyzed queen just inches from their feet, and when he reached the stables he tied up the bundle of cloth she was hidden in to his horse with the aid of an oblivious stable boy. He galloped out of the gates unfettered, and not a single person seemed to have noticed she was gone.

The valet uncovered her face so she could breathe, and she watched to her despair the castle get smaller and smaller as they crossed through the mountain trails. They were joined at the base of the eastern cliffs by five other men, dressed plainly but bearing the coat of arms of the principality of Sangonelle, a small country that had been allied with Arendelle for close to two hundred years.

They stopped just as dawn was starting to creep over the horizon, lit a fire in a clearing and took Elsa down from the horse. Even numb from whatever she had been drugged with, the long ride had given her cramps shooting up her legs and spine. One of the men pulled back the cloak she was wrapped in and grabbed her face, inspecting it roughly. Had she been able to, she would have bitten his fingers.

“Are you sure this is the queen?” he asked, turning back to the valet.

“Yes. That’s the queen. Doesn’t she look like the queen?”

The man shrugged. “Never seen a queen before. Bit young and skinny.”

“That’s the one our king ordered. Far be it for me to question him.”

Sangonelle’s king was young, unmarried and Elsa had met him once, as a child. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like. The only thing she really knew about Sangonelle the country was that their chief export was flowers and their military was even smaller than Arendelle’s. So what did they want with her?

She soon found out. They talked about her as though she wasn’t there.

“His lordship’s going to marry her. He couldn’t guarantee she’d agree to it, so he asked me to collect her so he can persuade her in person.”

The men laughed, their casual joviality at odds with the heinous act they’d committed.

“If she didn’t want to marry him before, why does he think smuggling her across the border’s going to help?” one of the men asked.

“The drug’s good for three days, give or take an hour. Once the marriage is consummated, there’s no going back, unless her majesty wants to return to her kingdom in disgrace.”

Kidnap, rape and forced marriage, and the men were discussing it all as easily as a group of friends discussing a fishing trip. For the first time in her life, Elsa felt her blood running cold.

“Almost seems a bit too easy. You weren’t followed at all?”

“Nobody suspected a thing,” the valet chuckled. “I’ll bet they still haven’t noticed.”

The men shared food, wine and stories and congratulated themselves on getting away as Elsa slipped further into despondency. How could nobody have noticed she was gone? Anna would be beside herself, the advisors in a panic, but they were so far away they might as well have been in another country. In less than two hours ride, they would cross the border into Sangonelle and all would be lost.

But just then, a shrill chirp from a nearby tree caught her attention. The men didn’t notice, it was just another forest sound to them, but Elsa had heard that sound before. She was able to swivel her eyes around and on the very edge of her vision she saw the brown-and-white speckled feathers between the leaves of the tree.

 _Lua,_ she thought.

So Merida _had_ noticed she was gone, and had sent the falcon to track her. Elsa felt a surge of hope burn through her so fierce it brought tears to her eyes.

Two of the men had gone into the forest to relieve themselves, and the others were just realizing that they hadn’t returned. One of their party went to investigate, and came back white and shaking.

“Our horses are gone. Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

“Of course I’m sure,” the valet snarled. “The guards are idiots. You didn’t tie the horses up properly, they won’t have gone far.”

“Knut and Malekson aren’t back yet, I couldn’t find them. Something’s happened to them.”

“They’ve had too much wine and gotten lost, you halfwit! If someone was following us we would have noticed!”            

One of the other men seemed to think the whole situation was hilarious. He stumbled to his feet and strode into the forest, shouting at the top of his voice.

“You think these woods are haunted, is that it?” he guffawed, waving his arms around. “Knut! Malekson! You must come out, Fass is worried we’ll be spirited away!”

The man disappeared behind an outcropping, there was a slight whistle on the wind, and then he spoke no more. The other men called his name, nervously, and when there was no answer they went for their weapons.

But it was far too late for that.

The man known as Fass caught his arrow in the eye and collapsed without a sound facefirst in the snow. The next second another arrow took out the man closest to him, it hit his heart and he had a moment of struggling to pull it out before it killed him. The remaining man and the valet were actively dodging now, but the hidden archer had a keen eye for movement and shot the last of the soldiers through the back of his head.

By now the valet had made his way to where Elsa was lying prone in the snow. He lifted her roughly against himself, holding her under the chin so he could press his sword against her throat. She dangled there, swinging slightly in the wind, feeling the blade press deeper with every beat of her heart. The valet’s hands were shaking.

“That’s enough!” he shouted into the clearing. “You come out now or she dies!”

To her dismay, Elsa saw Merida emerge from the top of an outcropping at the same time as her captor did, robbing her of the chance to take him out. She was alone, and dropped lightly to the front of them with an arrow aimed straight at the valet’s face, but she couldn’t take the shot while his sword was so close to Elsa’s jugular.

“Ha,” the valet laughed  grimly. “The woods are haunted after all, your highness. The little red ghost is the only one who comes for you.”

“You drop her, I let you live,” Merida called to him in heavily accented Dellian.

“You don’t bargain with me, you little wretch!” he roared at her. “You put down the bow or I’ll cut her open, see if I don’t!”

Merida likely didn’t understand the words, but she understood the intent. The sword was so tightly pressed against her now that Elsa could feel blood oozing down her neck. Merida’s face betrayed nothing, but she met Elsa’s eyes, uncertain.

 _I’m so sorry,_ Elsa would have said if she could. _You shouldn’t be here._

Slowly, agonizingly, Merida lowered the bow. The valet laughed, this time with relief. His grip on the sword relaxed and the sting of the blade on her skin eased.

“Two girls for the price of one,” he whispered in her ear, nastily. “Maybe my king will let me keep that one as a reward…”

Merida had lowered the bow, but only as far as her hip, and her pull on the string hadn’t relaxed at all. Without warning, she shot the arrow through the valet’s shin. He howled in pain for just a second before she strung another arrow and shot it through his open mouth. Elsa tumbled to the ground and the valet stumbled back, clawing at his mouth before a third arrow through his eye finished him off.

A moment of grey-clouded sky filled Elsa’s vision before Merida’s face swam into view, her hair falling either side of Elsa’s face like a curtain of flame. She dabbed cautiously at her wounded throat with her sleeve, checked her pulse, pressed her ear to Elsa’s chest to hear her heartbeat. All the while Elsa let the relief wash over her, so strong it felt as though it couldn’t be contained by her body. The clouds released a steadily descending arc of snow she couldn’t stop.

“Can you move anything at all?” Merida asked her, remarkably calm for someone who had just killed six people.

Elsa could only blink, so she did that. Merida’s sharp eyes spotted it.

“Good. I counted six men. Were there any more than six? Once for yes, twice for no.”

She blinked twice.

“Are we close to where they were taking you?”

She blinked once.

“Great,” Merida grumbled. “Then we can’t take the mountain paths, they’ll be tracking us that way. We’ll have to go the long way.”

She was gone then, Elsa could hear her looting the bodies of the men. The snow was gradually getting thicker. If she’d been able to move her arms, she could have stopped it. So much of her powers were locked in her gestures, but using just her mind to take control was still proving difficult.

“At least the snow will cover our tracks,” Merida called from somewhere to her left. “Could have done without it, though. Perfect bloody timing.”

 _I’m so sorry,_ Elsa berated herself internally. _I’d stop it if I could. I’m sorry._

“I tried to tell your guards as soon as I saw that one leave the castle, but they didn’t understand me. So I had to come after you myself,” Merida told her as she appeared in her eyeline again, and tied a strip of cloth around her throat to stop the bleeding. “What sort of servant goes running off with mysterious bundles after midnight unless he’s up to no good? And you weren’t in your office, which was strange on its own.”

She rolled Elsa’s dead weight onto a cloak she’d taken from one of the kidnappers and bundled her up like a baby. Elsa wanted to tell her not to bother, that the cold didn’t affect her and she’d probably need it more herself. But Merida didn’t notice the pleading in her eyes. She called Lua down and clicked some commands, and the bird took off.

“She’s off finding my horse,” Merida explained as she struggled to pick Elsa up from the ground and settle her weight on her shoulders, in a lift that was commonly known in Arendelle as the milkmaid’s burden. “Oh bloody hell, you’re heavier than you look!”

Kicking up snow with every step and grumbling in Gaelic the whole way, Merida carried the queen of Arendelle like a sack of flour in the direction the falcon had flown.

…..

They found Merida’s horse grazing on snowdrops a quarter mile from where the fracas had taken place. Apparently in her haste she’d picked the first horse she could find already bridled, which was a small chestnut jennet. It was saddle-less and wholly unsuitable for carrying more than one person, so she lay Elsa across its back, tethered her in place and guided the horse on foot. They left the mountain path as soon as they were able and travelled through a dense expanse of forest, the trees growing so close and so thick that they couldn’t see the sky through the branches.

Merida deliberately weaved in and out of the trees and kept up a steady stream of quiet conversation, both to let Elsa know what she was doing and to keep the horse from getting agitated by the zigzag direction they were travelling in.

“If they send dogs after us they’ll be stuck sniffing the trees for hours,” she said. Elsa was blown away by how well-prepared she was.

They hit a snag though just as the sun was beginning to set again and they reached the river. Her kidnapper had crossed a bridge to reach the mountain trails but it was the only crossing for miles and far too risky. Merida walked them to the shallows and started to edge her way over, but the horse refused to set foot in the water.

Merida, now cold and tired and frustrated beyond measure, berated and cajoled the horse in equal measure in Gaelic, trying to coax it into the water. Elsa was mildly amused to note that Merida had spoken more words to the horse in the last hour than she’d spoken to Elsa over an entire month.

Finally, she appeared to give up and lead the horse along the bank, away from the shallows to where the water was deeper and stiller.

“Sorry about this,” she said to Elsa. That was the only warning she and the horse got.

Merida barrelled into the horse from the side, sending the horse and the queen plunging into the water below. She jumped in herself a moment later, and let out one very short scream as the cold of the water hit her hard. The horse found its feet quickly and tried to turn back to the bank, but Merida got her wits back together and grabbed its reins to start guiding it across the river.

Elsa’s cloak was thick and fleece-lined, after the initial splash of water hit her outer covering she was still relatively dry even with her feet trailing in the water. Merida was grumbling shakily in Gaelic, and although Elsa couldn’t see her she could guess that the water was up to her shoulders.

“W-we’ll stop f-for the n-n-night once we get to the o-th-other side,” she called back to Elsa.

It was pitch black by the time they reached the other side; their route had taken almost twice the time of the mountain path. Thankfully, the castle was just visible in the distance. There was a small cave hidden behind some trees near the bank, Lua was perched on a rock just beside it as they climbed out of the water, calling for her mistress.

 

After quickly lighting a fire with sticks and moss and taking Elsa down from the back of the horse, Merida used one of the cloaks to wipe down the panting animal before she even began to see to herself. Her dress and cloak were soaked through and stuck to her, but she made sure Elsa and the horse were comfortable. Once they were settled and she began undoing the buttons on her bodice, Elsa realized this was going to be a problem.

 _Look away,_ she told herself sternly. _Just look away._

But she couldn’t look away. She still couldn’t move her head away and if she closed her eyes, Merida would think something was wrong and come closer. That was the last thing she needed with the places her mind was going.

_Don’t think that way. Don’t feel. Not again._

Merida’s sodden dress hit the floor with a thump, followed by her linen shift. She was wearing just a thin vest and bloomers, both of which were soaked through and transparent. The vest was too short, baring an inch of peach-toned skin. Elsa kept her eyes trained above her waist with difficulty, until Merida pulled her hair to one side to wring the water from it and her full breasts were so clearly outlined, the stiff peaks of her nipples so prominent that Elsa gasped for breath.

Being in this cave, so close to the beautiful body of a young girl, was bringing back thoughts that Elsa had banished from her mind for many years.

…..

She supposed it was natural, the only man she’d been around for any length of time was her father. Her days were filled with her mother, her sister and a succession of maids and governesses.

But even in the very earliest days, before she’d struck Anna with that icy blow, when stories of handsome knights and beautiful maidens were read to her, her eyes were always drawn to the girls in the pictures who were so winsome and graceful. Women moved so fluidly and left the scent of flowers in their wake, men stomped and spat and cursed and smelled of meat and sweat. Even her father, that genial well-mannered gentleman, did not in her eyes possess the same easy elegance as even the lowliest kitchen wench.

Flossie was the one who brought it to a head.

Her true name was unknown to Elsa, Flossie was a nickname given to her for her untidy, careless nature. Elsa was ten years old, Flossie in her late teens or early twenties. She was given the job of cleaning Elsa’s bedroom and serving her meals, someone obviously thinking that the young spirited maid would bring some cheer to the dour little princess.

The maid was plump, heavy-bosomed. Her uniform seemed to fit her badly, the buttons of her bodice often popped and the straps of her apron would fall, bringing her sleeves with them. Sometimes when she bent over her petticoats would show, or she would forget her petticoat entirely and show a good three inches of her bloomers above her stockings. The stockings themselves would come loose from their garters and leave her milky-white calves bare. Even her springy blonde curls had trouble staying in her cap. The other maids compared her to a broody hen, the head housekeeper despaired of her, but she did her job cheerfully and efficiently so she kept it.

Elsa’s eyes were drawn to Flossie, no matter what she was doing. While she pretended to concentrate on her arithmetic, she watched Flossie tend to the fireplace on her knees with her bottom in the air and her petticoat raised above her thighs. She tracked the gentle bounce of the maid’s bosom as she hurried about with serving dishes. One afternoon, as Flossie leaned forward to ladle some soup into Elsa’s bowl, two of her bodice buttons sprang open, and Elsa moaned quietly with longing.

Not quietly enough.

Flossie noticed, because of course she did. A slow smile crossed her face as a mortified blush crossed Elsa’s. She fixed her buttons and left without a word. What was meant by the smile, Elsa could not know.

After that, Flossie was untidier than ever. It was clear to Elsa that she did it deliberately. Now her petticoats, on the days she remembered to wear them, were rolled up to bare her knees and thighs when she worked at the fireplace. Three bodice buttons would come loose instead of two. In summer she would complain about the heat and raise her skirt to fan herself, grinning at Elsa all the while.

Perhaps she was happy that she, a serving wench, had such power over a girl who was so far above her. Or perhaps she was just trying to provide a giddy thrill to a lonely, sexually frustrated adolescent. Either way it left Elsa a nervous wreck. She knew enough to know that thinking of another girl in such a way was considered at best a joke, at worst an abomination, and in a princess completely unthinkable.

Flossie was removed from serving at the castle after a year, only to be replaced with another problem.

Madame Martine was a Bretanol noblewoman, a widow of fifty years old whose estate had been swallowed by her husband’s debts. She gladly took on the position of governess to Elsa (Anna had a different governess, one who was not so austere.)

Elsa was glad, at first. Madame Martine was well-preserved but not especially attractive. She was thin and dressed severely, buttons done up well past her throat and hair pinned back so tightly it also pulled back some of the skin of her face. But when she pulled off her gloves, Elsa noticed that she had the most beautiful hands.

She contained herself for a long time, and Madame Martine was an excellent teacher who was not really as strict as she appeared to be. She kept her gloves on almost all of the time, but took them off for meals, whereupon Elsa would look away.

One night, having worked particularly hard on a philosophy problem, Madame Martine told her to put down her pen and take a break for some tea.

“You shall pour, I think,” Madame said, bringing over the teacups.

It happened so quickly Elsa had barely time to think about what she was doing. One moment she was pouring the tea and Madame was taking off her gloves, the next moment she had stroked Madame’s bare hand with her own and was looking at Madame’s shocked face. She practically threw herself away to sit at the other side of the table, to act as though nothing had happened even though her face was burning and the air was turning ice cold.

Madame kept her composure, pulled her gloves back on, and they sat in silence for a moment that seemed to stretch for hours. Finally, she spoke.

“In her lifetime,” Madame began, “a woman must keep many secrets. Particularly if that woman is of noble birth.”

She smiled at Elsa, not unkindly but it cut through Elsa as easily as a scowl would have.

“We will not speak of this again,” Madame promised her.

Elsa buried her feelings. Conceal, don’t feel, while she was keeping secrets why not keep more? And true, if people thought her powers were a curse what would be said if they knew she had unnatural longing for female company too? Best carve it out and put it somewhere deep inside where she never had to think about it again.

…..

But female flesh was, up until this point, buried under layers of thick wool and silver buttons and cold formal politeness. Elsa had never been this close to a nearly naked woman before. Merida was completely unconcerned that Elsa might have been watching her, she was using one of the spare cloaks to dry herself off and wringing out the scraps of cloth she was still (barely) wearing. Her dress and cloak were hanging beside the fire to dry.

When she covered herself with a dry cloak, Elsa was relieved, but only a little. Even knowing how naked she was under the cloak filled her with unbearable longing. Merida approached her to check that she was wrapped up warmly and to pull her closer to the fire, and even that small closeness set her skin tingling.

“I’ll keep watch until morning, you should try and get some sleep,” Merida said to her.

As if she could sleep now. But she closed her eyes and at least mimed sleep, for both their sakes.

…..

At sunrise, Elsa dutifully kept her eyes closed as Merida pulled on her still-damp, still ice-cold dress and trussed her up onto the horse again. Crossing the terrain to the castle was a shorter distance now but even more difficult, the snow had turned the ground into a thick quagmire that Merida or the horse or both kept getting stuck in. By the time the castle was in front of them, the horse was snorting angrily and Merida’s mood was foul.

The guards stopped them at the gate, aiming their spears at Merida and shouting orders at her too fast for her to understand. From what Elsa could gather, the whole castle was in a frenzy since her disappearance.

“Oh, you not want queen?” Merida snapped at them in broken Dellian. “I put queen back where I find, yes?”

There was a moment of silence, and then the guards were at Elsa’s side, yelling for help. They pulled her down from the horse, a stretcher was found, they wrapped her in blankets and called for the doctor. Out of the corner of her eye Elsa saw the guards produce shackles and arrest Merida, who incredulously protested her innocence in the little Dellian she knew and Angolsi, neither of which helped at all. Giving up, she angrily let herself be lead away muttering in Gaelic.

 _Don’t arrest her, you idiots!_ Elsa screamed internally. _She saved me! She was the only one who came after me!_

But then Anna was at her side, breathing so frantically Elsa feared she had done damage to herself. When she saw that Elsa was alive and relatively unharmed, her eyes flooded and she threw herself across Elsa’s body, hugging her so tightly she felt her ribs creak and sobbing so ferociously her whole body trembled.

Elsa supposed it was nice to know somebody had missed her.

…..

 


	7. Chapter Seven

All or Nothing

Chapter Seven

Thanks again for all the feedback I’ve been getting for this fic, and could I ask you to please keep it coming if you don’t mind. A review can brighten my whole day and makes me want to keep writing, and as I’m currently working three jobs finding the time, energy and motivation to write is difficult.

Notes on this chapter, and a few following. Some people might think I’m writing Elsa OOC. From my perspective, Elsa is very sheltered and awkward around people as a result of her upbringing. She’s had all the requisite schooling of someone who was due to take the crown but given none of the interpersonal skills beyond political scheming. So she’s reacting to what should be a pretty standard crush on a girl with all the finesse of a hypochondriac with the sniffles.

Also, yes I am aware that IV medicine wasn’t really a thing until the 1800’s. Artistic licence, a wizard did it.

…..

Recovery from the drugging was slow, and throughout Elsa was hyper-aware that Merida was probably languishing in the dungeon and she was helpless to order her release. The doctor was called and he tried to flush the drugs from her system with intravenous therapy and salt water, which did nothing but make her cranky and sore.

Anna refused to leave her side, even when the doctor ordered her to wash and get some sleep. She curled up beside her sister and cuddled in, clutching her arm and sleeping fitfully. With nothing else to do but look around her, Elsa had to note the dark circles under her little sister’s eyes and red blotches on her cheeks, and mentally added another cartload of guilt to the mountain she’d built up in her mind.

Eventually, after what was two days in reality but what felt like at least a month, she regained the feeling in her extremities and struggled to sit up. Anna woke beside her with a start, and immediately tried to help her sit up and peppered her with frantic questions.

“Do you feel okay? Should I call the doctor? I can get you some water or….”

Elsa held up her arm, shaking hard, to silence her. Her first attempts to speak came out as a grating croak, but she managed to get the words out.

_“Tell them….to release Merida….this instant.”_

Anna sighed with relief, and smiled shakily.

“They let her go yesterday; her tutor helped her make a statement. And they found the bodies.”

After mentioning the bodies, Anna’s lip began to quiver and her eyes filled.

“I can’t believe…. I nearly lost you. _Again!”_

Elsa drew her sister into her arms and stroked her head as she sobbed it out. She was too worn out to shed tears herself, and her mind was full of the implications of what had happened.

As soon as she was up and walking, her chamber was flooded by her council asking questions, the staff pushing water and blankets at her, the captain of the guard making a borderline hysterical apology for his men’s’ incompetence. Anna was hustled away to rest. Elsa let the clamour wash over her until one of her advisors mentioned that an envoy from Sangonelle had arrived at the castle that morning.

“I’ll see him in my office,” she said.

“My queen, he can wait. You need to build up your strength,” Chancellor Holm cautioned with what he probably thought was a fatherly air, but just came off as patronising.

“Thank you for your concern, I have more than enough strength to deal with this one man,” she waved him away. “I’d like him to be gone sooner rather than later.”

The room emptied and she hurriedly undressed and redressed into full queenly attire. Sangonelle hadn’t wasted any time, and they were making a ploy for her understanding by sending just one envoy to talk with her. One envoy could be executed, making him a martyr and providing a good excuse for open war. She couldn’t afford to let that happen, but equally she couldn’t let this man believe that Arendelle was weak.

He was already waiting in her office when she swept in. He was a dignified-looking man in his fifties, slightly built and genial.

“Your highness,” he greeted her warmly, even as she frowned at him. “I am pleased to see you’re looking well.”

“Some of your countrymen would have been less pleased to see me looking so,” she couldn’t resist stabbing at him. She wasn’t here to play nice with this man. She sat across from him and tinged the air with a hint of ice.

“On behalf of my country, I would like to offer my most sincere apologies for that unpleasantness.”

“Unpleasantness? Your king ordered a spy to infiltrate this castle, poison me with an unknown substance and kidnap me to force my hand in marriage. Unpleasant doesn’t exactly cover it.”

To the envoy’s credit, he didn’t deny it.

“My king, to be quite frank, is an idiot boy,” he began, shaking his head. “His parents died when he was a child and he’s been left to run quite feral, I’m afraid. We’ve tried to take a firm hand with him where we can, but there’s only so much you can chastise a crown prince.”

“Childish larks are one thing, this goes far beyond….”

“My king is not a malicious man,” he interjected. “He’s a fool. I think it was not meant as an act of malevolence. He is very aware of your beauty, and your great power, and he had notions of making a grand romantic gesture. He trusted the wrong people to carry it out, because he is a fool.”

“You must take me for a fool too, if you expect me to buy your story. That man worked in the castle as a servant for a year.”

“And was subsequently killed, along with five other Sangonellian citizens, by a refugee you are giving sanctuary to in your state.”

“She killed six criminals who were abducting the queen of Arendelle to unknown ends. Had they been caught by my guards they would have been killed on the spot. I see no real difference.”

The envoy raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“I am not debating that theirs was a criminal act, it was. I would like to assure you that no real harm would have come to you upon reaching Sangonelle, and the king has been chastised. I only ask that you do not punish the people of Sangonelle for their king’s idiocy. We would like to keep trading with you, and stay your trusted allies.”

Elsa sighed, rubbed her forehead and sat back.

“Allies, I cannot agree to. Not right away, in any case. I can promise we will make no aggressive moves on Sangonelle unless there are any made on us, in which case we will retaliate. As for trade, I don’t know.”

“We have great need of Arendellian wool. This has been a hard winter. And I believe you have need of several of our flowers to produce your medicine. It would be best for both our peoples to continue as we are.”

Damn. He had a point. They could probably import wool from somewhere else, at a much higher cost, but they grew plants that were invaluable to Arendelle’s apothecaries.

“We can negotiate to sell our plants at a lower price, for two years,” the envoy offered. “As a gesture of our regret.”

“Five years,” Elsa retorted. She wanted this man gone. “And we will lower the price of our wool, no sense in both of our economies suffering. I would also like minimal contact with the crown during those years.”

“It shall be done. And I thank you for your understanding.”

With that, he was sent away, and Elsa sat in contemplation for quite some time. This incident had exposed several chinks in Arendelle’s armour, and it would take a lot of work to patch them up. So much for her restful winter.

…..

Elsa worked hard, from dawn to dusk she was in her office tightening the security of her realm. She was grateful for it, if she was honest, because working so hard that she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow kept her mind away from another pressing issue.

She had yet to formally thank Merida for rescuing her. She’d been avoiding her, citing her busy schedule as the reason why she didn’t join her and Anna at meals anymore and ducking into empty rooms when she heard her coming down the hall. At night she still saw the flash of red from her office window but studiously, fanatically avoided it.

Because now that she was aware of her growing attraction, she was plagued by it. It was as though a wall had been breached and all of this liquid longing was flowing out. When she closed her eyes the image of Merida half-undressed was engraved in her mind’s eye. Just glimpsing her from down the hall, or sitting on the ledge from the window, every movement seemed uncommonly graceful and sensual. The slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed sent a shudder of yearning down Elsa’s spine.

Even in dreams, Elsa wasn’t safe. She dreamed of the cave every night but her brain helpfully filled in the scene with things that had definitely not happened. Merida turned and looked right at her as she shed her clothes in her dreams, smiled at her, approached her, laid a small white hand on her cheek that felt like burning.

_“Elsa….”_ she whispered, slow and seductive and nothing at all like reality.

Elsa woke in a fluster of self-loathing and intense desire. There was a dull throb between her legs that she studiously ignored, her skin was wet and cold with perspiration.

Two weeks after her rescue, Anna barged into her office and flopped down in the chair across from her.

“Can I help you?” Elsa asked.

“Why are you being weird?” Anna blurted out.

“What? I’m not….am I?” she stammered.

“Merida thinks you’re mad at her for killing those kidnappers. You haven’t even thanked her for rescuing you, and that’s just bad manners.”

“I’m not mad at her,” Elsa sputtered. “I’ve….been busy.”

“Well, you can’t blame her for thinking that. You keep doing that air thing when she’s around.”

“What? What air thing?”

“You know… that thing you do when you don’t like someone so you make it all cold. You do it whenever she’s around.”

“I do not!”

“You do too! Why do you think I’ve been wearing so many shawls?”

Elsa had to stop and think for a moment. Anna _had_ been wearing a lot of shawls, she’d just assumed it was a fashion choice. And Merida did seem distinctly uncomfortable in Elsa’s presence….just how long had she been doing that?

“What have you got against her anyway?” Anna continued, as Elsa’s mind retraced the last few months. “She’s super nice, and she’s lots of fun and her Dellian isn’t _that_ bad…”

“I have nothing against her, don’t be dramatic,” Elsa sighed. “I didn’t realise I was being… _cold_. It’s not easy for me, you know. I’m not used to talking to people I don’t give orders to.”

“I know that,” Anna said, her tone softening. “It’s a learning curve for me too. Kristoff’s so busy at work and Olaf’s been gone for who knows how long and you’re always delegating…”

“All right, all right,” Elsa stopped her. She didn’t need any more guilt for the pile. “I’ll be friendlier, I promise. I’ll try, at least.”

“Good,” Anna said as she rose to her feet. She stood for a moment, swinging her hands.

“Did you need anything else?” Elsa asked.

“Uh, no,” Anna mumbled. Then she gave her sister an awkward thumbs up.

“Good talk!” she said, and sauntered out. Elsa sighed, long-suffering.

Sometimes it was up for debate which sister was the oddest.

…..

She practiced her friendly, relaxed smile in the mirror until it looked somewhat natural before she called Merida to the office. But evidently it had devolved back into a grimace when Merida actually arrived, because as soon as she was through the door she was glancing around nervously. Elsa dropped it to her usual, neutral face.

_Don’t make it cold, don’t make it cold, don’t make it cold…._

Elsa was so caught in trying to keep a neutral face and trying to keep the room temperature at a comfortable level that after three whole minutes of silence, Merida cleared her throat to get her attention.

“You wanted to talk to me, your highness?” Merida asked her tentatively.

“Oh, uh, yes,” Elsa sputtered. Damn. She’d wanted to keep the awkwardness to a minimum and failed in the first few moments. But how was she supposed to concentrate when Merida’s bodice was so tight? She’d need to have a word with the dressmaker…

Merida was beginning to look worried.

“I….um, I realize this is coming very late….” Elsa began, keeping her eyes firmly trained on Merida’s face, “and I’m sorry for that. As you can imagine, my affairs have been very chaotic since the…incident….”

Now Merida just looked bewildered. And her eyes were very blue, which was distracting and quite unfair, really.

“….thank you for rescuing me,” Elsa blurted out finally. “If you hadn’t, I dread to think what might have happened.”

“Oh,” Merida replied, with a casual shrug. “S’alright.”

“I’m serious,” Elsa stressed. “You may have saved the realm from disaster. And I am also sorry they arrested you afterwards.”

“S’alright,” Merida shrugged again. “I know how it looks, I marched up to their gates with their queen trussed up like a chicken, and I couldn’t tell them why. Your dungeons are quite nice, actually. Probably doesn’t help deter crime much.”

“I’m glad you understand,” Elsa said, as she felt sweat beading along her brow. “You deserve a… _reward_ for your actions. Tell me how I can reward you.”

Merida frowned.

“I’m okay, thanks. I don’t need anything.”

Now Elsa frowned.

“You can have _anything._ Just name it. You risked your life…”

“Honestly, I’m fine. I have everything I need.”

“ _Anything._ Anything at all.”

“You don’t have anything I want.”

The air was starting to get cold and damp again, Elsa noted with frustration.

“You could have anything you wish for, and you won’t take it,” she growled, and instantly regretted it when Merida’s eyes clouded over.

“I have many wishes. I wish I wasn’t married to a monster. I wish my brothers weren’t in exile. I wish I could see them without risking their lives or mine,” she said, in a flat monotone devoid of emotion. “While I’m at it, I wish my parents weren’t dead, or at least that they didn’t die the way they did.”

Add another generous dollop to the guilt pile.

“I’m sorry,” Elsa sighed. “I’m not very good at this.”

Merida said nothing, just looked away.

“I am grateful to you,” she continued. “I don’t know how to express it. I want you to be happy here. I want us to be friends.”

At this admission, which just slipped out, Merida looked shocked.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked.

“Of course,” Elsa said. With it out in the open, she actually felt more comfortable. “If you can forgive my … ineptness. I think you’ve noticed I don’t really have any friends.”

“Well, yes, but I thought everyone here was like that,” Merida quipped.

“Anna’s not like that,” Elsa said, frowned.

“I thought she was the exception.”

Elsa couldn’t help it, a laugh bubbled in her throat and trying to suppress it only lead to it coming out through her nose in an inelegant snort. She held her hand over her mouth as her shoulders shook with laughter. Merida smiled, looking infinitely more at ease.

When the laughing subsided, Elsa wiped her eyes and held out her hand to Merida.

“Do you think we could start fresh?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?” Merida took her hand with a grin. “Hello, I’m Princess Merida of Dunbroch.”

Merida’s hand in hers sent a wave of warmth through her arm throughout her entire body. She gulped.

“Queen Elsa of Arendelle. Pleased to meet you.”

…..

The winter snows gradually cleared to fresh spring breezes with a hint of ice in the air. Elsa was as busy as she ever had been, their agreement with Sangonelle having had a knock-on effect with two of their allies that kept her working late and kept her advisors scheduling meetings on an almost daily basis.

Her relationship with Merida was considerably warmer now, which delighted Anna, but it was understood that she had limited time to spend with either of them. She was somewhat bitterly pleased about this, because for all that they were friends now some things were still hard to see, hard to take.

Anna had always been tactile, a very touchy-feely person. Out of a very thin sense of propriety she contained her affection for Kristoff until they were married (and that paperwork was a headache and a half) but she was unrestrained around Merida. She hugged her constantly, held her hand, patted her head, linked arms with her, and kissed her cheeks and forehead often. Merida took it all stoically, like a person tolerating the affections of an enthusiastic dog. The fact that Anna was a solid five inches taller made it all look very comical.

Elsa’s desire hadn’t waned since their fresh start, as hard as she tried she couldn’t see Merida in a light that was entirely friendly. Anna got to experience everything she wanted, although it was entirely chaste, and it galled her. But she managed to bury it, reason it away to herself, at least for a while.

And then one evening in February, Elsa heard a lot of noise coming from the foyer. Anna was babbling excitedly about something. They’d been out sailing in the fjord and something had obviously happened. Elsa left the office to investigate.

Merida was soaking wet and turning blue. Kristoff was white as a sheet and trembling. Anna, by contrast, was vibrating with excitement. She lit up when she saw Elsa.

“ _OhmyGodElsayou’llneverguessitwassocool….”_

Elsa ignored her and addressed Kristoff and Merida.

“What happened? Please tell me you didn’t go swimming in the middle of…”

“She punched out Old Toby!” Anna practically screamed.

Elsa stared at Merida, aghast. Merida looked sheepish.

“Big fish, many teeth, try to eat face,” she mumbled in Dellian. “I beat with fist.”

“She got him right in the eye,” Anna squealed. “It was the best! Oh, and he knocked her out of the boat.”

Kristoff found his voice, and gave her a more measured account of what happened, although he sounded like he was going to be sick.

“Old Toby popped up and tried to knock over the boat, Merida saw him and panicked. She punched him in the eye and he knocked her into the water with his tail. We managed to get her back in before he came back.”

Elsa swallowed hard. Old Toby was supposedly over fifty years old and eighteen feet long. He often popped up beside boats but the prevailing logic said to leave him alone and he’d eventually go away. That could have gone a hell of a lot worse.

“Well, I’m glad everyone made it back safely. Anna, I think you should get Kristoff a glass of brandy. Merida, there’s hot water in my personal bathroom, I’ll run you a hot bath.”

Merida only really understood the words ‘hot’ and ‘bath’ and nodded eagerly, shivering. Elsa lead her away as Anna lead Kristoff to the kitchens.

“You’ve done it now,” she intoned grimly in Angolsi. “Old Toby will be out for revenge. I’ll put a guard on your bedroom door tonight.”

“I c-couldn’t help it, all I s-saw was this w-w-wall of teeth coming at me,” Merida grumbled shakily. “I w-was always t-told to go f-for the eyes.”

Elsa’s personal bathroom, attached to her bedchamber, was one of the few in the castle that had hot water pipes connected to a geyser running under the foundations. She laid a robe out on the bed for Merida to change into and left her to get undressed while she ran the bath. Only when she was stuck in the bathroom, with only the door separating the two of them, did she realize she’d gotten herself into a cagey situation.

She heard the first thump of wet wool hitting the carpet of her bedroom, and a few muffled curses as Merida peeled off the soaked layers. Elsa supressed a groan; it almost seemed deliberate, to end up in a situation so similar to the one that had began her fascination.

And yet….

When would she get a chance like this again?

Fleetingly, she had a moment of remorse as she kneeled at the keyhole and peered through, but it lasted just a moment before all coherent thought fled from her mind.

It was just like the cave, except that Merida didn’t stop after she removed her shift, but pulled down her vest past her torso to drop it on the floor. Her back was to the door and most of her upper torso was blocked by hair, but Elsa caught a tantalizing sweeping curve of breast from the side. She gasped, and suppressed it by clamping her hand over her mouth.

She bit her lip to keep quiet as Merida pulled at the drawstring holding up her bloomers, and unconsciously her hand strayed under her skirt to her crotch as the girl in the next room rolled her underwear down over her hips and kicked them away.

Elsa pressed her knuckles between her thighs. It wasn’t much, but just that perfectly round, perfectly heart-shaped bottom in her line of sight was inflaming. She wanted to press her face to that plump white flesh, test the weight with her hands. It was firm, she had muscle, but it bounced slightly as Merida bent forward to peel off her stockings.

She looked smaller, more vulnerable without clothes. It made Elsa want her more, made her want to steal her away and hide her against her own body.

But as Merida bent over further, her hair tumbled to the side, and Elsa got a sharp reminder of just how vulnerable she was. Crisscrossed over her spine, unnaturally vivid against her pale unmarked skin, the scar tissue from the whipping she’d endured was dark pink and painful-looking long after it healed.

Elsa felt a rush of cold that killed her desire in that moment with a heavy dose of guilt. She turned back to the bath, noting sheepishly that it was close to overflowing.

Merida came in after a while wrapped in the robe and oblivious to how she had been spied on. If she noticed that Elsa’s face was red and her gaze directed at the floor, it didn’t show.

…..

**Old Toby is a Greenland Shark, btw.**


	8. Chapter Eight

**All or Nothing**

**Chapter Eight**

 

I finally got around to posting this fic on Tumblr. I like Tumblr, but I’m old and confused by all this modern social media, so please bear with me.

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/aornff

 

Elsa is approaching very dodgy territory, largely because I see her as having trouble with healthy boundaries and what’s appropriate regardless of whether Merida knows she’s being creeped on or not. I do not intend to portray this as a healthy relationship for either of them, at least right now.

…..

A lifetime’s worth of private, intense schooling had taught Elsa to tackle any problems in a logical manner. So she attempted to logically explain away her attraction to Merida in the hopes that she would realize her feelings weren’t that strong after all.

Merida was beautiful, there was no denying that. If one had an inclination for women anyway, which Elsa had to admit she did.

She was exotic by the standards of Arendelle, a country whose bloodlines were built on just five noble families and a handful of their servants who had fled the North 500 years before. An Arendellian native could be spotted by a peculiar bluish tint under the skin and thin, straight hair. Merida’s skin, fair as it was, had a red glow to it and her voluminous curls drew the eye no matter where she was.

She radiated good health, too, something that could be attributed to her Ceiltic bloodline. As far as Elsa knew, Ceilts didn’t have much regard for preserving the purity of a royal line. The throne was won by strength and marrying what would be considered commoners wasn’t frowned upon. Merida had warrior’s blood, and there was no clearer evidence than the fact that she’d been submerged in ice-cold water twice and not even caught a cold.

There was a definite element of empathy there, too. Elsa having spent most of her life kept away from people could easily put herself in the place of an exiled girl stuck in a foreign land, ignorant of the language and confused by the customs. She’d coped admirably, so that was another layer to the likeability factor.

Add to all this the fact that Merida had saved both her life and Anna’s and it was no wonder Elsa was drawn to her. She’d been drawn to Flossie in much the same way, the woman who had provided her food and warmth and an air of jollity. And to Madame Martine, who had treated her with such kindness and understanding.

 _Give it time,_ she thought. _It will pass._

It did not.

…..

The catalyst, the moment Elsa really realized she was in trouble, was when she chose to reveal her ice powers to Merida. Her hand was forced by Olaf, or rather by lack of Olaf. They’d been talking over breakfast, Anna relating some story that involved Olaf in some way. Elsa had barely been paying attention, until Merida spoke up when she’d been quiet all morning.

“Who is Olaf?” she asked. “You talk of him often, I never see him.”

Anna shrugged, but then thought on it for a while.

“You know, he’s been gone for a long time. Like, months! Do you think he’s okay, Elsa?”

It was odd. They hadn’t missed him as such, he had a tendency to come and go as he pleased. But to be away for so long was admittedly worrying.

“Has anyone seen him recently that you know of?” she asked Anna.

“Kristoff did, he said he met him on the North mountain.”

She met Kristoff later, as he was coming down from an expedition up the mountain. The weather was getting warmer and ice would soon be in high demand. She asked about Olaf, and was very worried by what she heard.

“I asked why he hadn’t been down lately too,” Kristoff told her. “He said it’s too warm for him down here.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Elsa. “He has his flurry, and the weather hasn’t turned properly yet. It’s not nearly warm enough for him to melt.”

Kristoff was removing his damp coat and boots, as he always did after a mountain trip, shaking them by the door before he went for hot coffee in the kitchens. Elsa followed behind him, noticing he left wet footprints behind him.

“I’m only telling you what he told me, you know how hard it is to get a straight answer out of him,” he shrugged.

“Even so, he’s not usually sensible enough to stay out of the heat, he should have been down at some point.”

“There is something going on up there,” Kristoff muttered.

Her head snapped up. A cold sense of foreboding fell on her. By now they’d reached the kitchens and Kristoff had been handed a pot of coffee by the steward and was warming on a stool in front of the fire. The servants milled around in silence. The queen rarely went to the kitchens herself. With a wave, she dismissed them all. This was a discussion better held privately.

“What do you mean? What do you think is going on up there?”

Only now she noticed how wet Kristoff’s hair was, limp strands hanging sodden over his forehead. He looked worn out, with dark blue circles under his eyes.

“The snow up there isn’t solid,” he told her gravely. “Definitely not as packed as it should be this time of year. The ice on the lake is thinner and really brittle. It splinters as soon as you put the pick into it. I should have harvested three times what I’ve gotten this season.”

Elsa inhaled sharply. This was bad. Kristoff didn’t have to work, as the fiancé of the princess he had everything provided for him, but he took pride in the work he did. With the exception of Elsa herself, nobody knew ice and snow like Kristoff.

“I’m sorry it’s been so hard for you. You should have told me this sooner,” she said quietly. “What do you think is causing this?”

He shrugged.

“The base temperature hasn’t changed, there’s no major difference in the wind or rainfall,” he stated. “This shouldn’t be happening. Everything’s affected. Even your ice castle.”

She couldn’t hold back a gasp. The castle too? The walls were a metre thick!

“How bad is it?”

Kristoff sucked in his breath through his teeth. Elsa braced herself.

“The structure’s still sound, most of the columns are standing. But almost all the walls have disintegrated. Only the south facing ones are intact.”

Elsa felt tears prick the back of her eyes and forced them back with difficulty. She hadn’t been back, not since she’d been taken away by Hans and his men, but she’d hoped to keep it there for when she needed some peace. For all that the castle held bad memories, it was the first structure she’d built after releasing her full potential and would always hold a place in her heart. For as long as it stayed standing, at least.

“You could do something about it, couldn’t you?” Kristoff asked her. “Excuse me for my ignorance, I’m not sure quite how your powers work, but you must have some influence over this phenomena?”

She could, in theory. Elsa’s powers did have a small sway over the weather itself, in that the moisture in the air could be affected by how many ice particles she was pumping into it at any given time. It couldn’t be scientifically measured (not for lack of trying) and how much or how little was very much dependant on her emotional state….

_Oh!_

She’d spent almost half a year pumping ice into the air without realizing it, due to Merida’s presence. Who knows what else she’d been doing without knowing? Her emotions had been churning from joy to despair and back again and she hadn’t even thought of what effect it was having on her powers.

Kristoff shivered, and although she tried to pull the cold out of the room there was a blanket of desolation descending on her and it was like trying to walk through thick mud.

“I’ll fix this. I promise,” she informed Kristoff grimly, and walked away.

…..

The first step towards fixing what was wrong was to wrench back some control over her powers. She’d been trying to keep them a secret from Merida, as was the protocol with all foreigners who hadn’t heard about it through the grapevine. But if Elsa was supposed to use her powers to repair the hole she’d punched in the atmosphere, she’d have to tell her.

She found Merida late at night, as always dangling off of the ledge in the tower scanning the skies for Lua. Maudie had been sending a lot of letters as of late (Elsa had to translate them all, and she couldn’t help feeling annoyed with Maudie for continually asking why Merida couldn’t just sail to meet them on Cava. The woman was either dense or actively malicious.)

She watched Merida in silence for a few moments, mentally bracing herself. Then, cautiously, she approached.

“May I speak with you?”

Merida jumped, and for a brief awful moment Elsa thought she’d topple off of the side. But her balance was good, and before Elsa could send a spike of ice out to catch her, she’s rebalanced, spun around and was looking at Elsa as if nothing was amiss.

“You surprise me,” Merida said. She’d been making an effort to speak nothing but Dellian until she’d grasped it perfectly.  “What you want with me?”

“We should speak Angolsi for this, I think,” Elsa suggested. “There is something I need to tell you about.”

“That sounds serious,” Merida switched to Angolsi. “Is something wrong?”

“Well, yes,” Elsa began. Merida looked worried, and she mentally cursed herself. “But it’s nothing to do with you. Not really.”

She was getting flustered. Her hands grasped her skirt, clenching at the fabric in the hopes that it would ground her. But Merida beamed a reassuring smile at her, and her panic receded, at least a little.

“Just spit it out then, get it over and done with. I’m not easy to shock,” Merida quipped.

Elsa took a deep breath. She tried to speak, but couldn’t find the words. Her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“It can’t be that bad, surely?” Merida said, frowning.

There was no choice. The words wouldn’t come, so her hands did the talking. A thin stream of ice flowed from her fingers, hovered in the air, and clattered to the ground, shattering like glass.

To her credit, Merida didn’t scream. She did go very white and, in a move that Elsa was sure was pure instinct, put her hand to where the scabbard of a sword would have been if she’d had one there. Unfortunately instinct worked both ways, because to Elsa it looked like she was going to topple off of the ledge and she reacted by wrapping a circlet of ice around her back, fusing her to the ledge. She dangled there, helplessly. Elsa stood with her arms raised towards her, just as helplessly.

Well. That could have gone better.

After a few deep, shuddering breaths, Merida pulled herself out of the ice circle and brushed the crumbs of frost from her shoulders.

“Wasn’t expecting that,” she muttered. Elsa nearly laughed.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, her tongue still feeling too thick to form words properly. “I thought you were going to fall.”

“So you are a _bandraoi,_ like I thought.”

“I guess so.”

“ _Cre draiochta,_ isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Earth magic. You used blood magic before. You can use both.”

“You’re taking this very well, I must say.”

It was true, Merida wasn’t looking at her with terror or disgust, although she was still pale and her hands trembling. There was caution there, but that was no bad thing. Merida shrugged, probably in an attempt to look more confident than she felt.

 _“Draiocht_ is everywhere in Dunbroch. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it. Not the way you do it though. _Bandraoi_ live far away from everyone else, mostly.”

Elsa felt the tension drain out of her.

“I don’t use my powers often, just when it’s needed. At the moment there’s a problem with the ice on the North mountain and I am needed to set it right.”

“Do your people know you have magic?” Merida asked, with an odd tone. “I can understand why you didn’t want to tell me, but you haven’t kept it from the common folk?”

“There was an… incident. I’ll tell you about it some other time, I think one shock is enough for today. But yes, my people know.”

“And… they’re okay with you being their queen?”

Some of the tension returned. Elsa didn’t like where this was going.

“Whether they’re okay with it or not is of no consequence. I am their rightful ruler by blood.”

But of course, blood meant nothing to a Ceilt. Merida made a face, not quite a frown but almost.

“Is magic frowned upon in Dunbroch then?” Elsa said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice and failing.

“Not at all,” Merida responded  coolly. “But for a ruler to have such an unfair advantage, the Gods have frowned upon it in the past. It’s written in our legends. The Gods must think highly of you to allow you to continue as you are.”

Elsa was about to correct her, to inform her that there was only _one_ God, and He had nothing to do with her powers. But the diplomat in her pulled her back. It was not her place to assume her own culture was more acceptable than another’s.

“I do not presume to know what any unearthly power has in mind for me,” Elsa sighed. “I have ice powers, I use them when needed, and the rest of the time I am an ordinary queen doing my queenly duties.”

That seemed to placate Merida, although she still looked quite grave. She nodded.

“Fair enough,” she said. “It’s not my place to question the Gods. Not here, anyway. Why do you think they gave you these powers, though?”

“I have no idea,” Elsa lied.

…..

What Elsa knew, she knew from the book on one of the rare occasions that curiosity drove her to place a hair from her mother’s hairbrush on the page, so she could know why she was so blessed.

The regret she felt afterwards stayed with her for weeks.

Iduna Eilebrecht was a lovely, cheerful girl with lustrous chestnut curls and a melodic voice. Her hand was sought in marriage from the moment she turned twelve and debuted at court, but her parents, sensible as they were, refused to agree to any matches until she turned eighteen. They were hoping for the highest honour for their only child.

This suited Iduna, for she was very much in love with Count Rasmun Haxthosen, who was twenty-two and was technically her half-uncle on her father’s side. The Count was climbing the ladder of Dellian society and would make an excellent match for her once he’d risen high enough. Fifteen and madly in love, and so secure in the knowledge that this man was her trueborn husband, Iduna saw no reason to keep her affections to herself.

But Rasmun was hot-blooded and eager to make a name for himself, and with Arendelle committed to peace the only way for him to achieve battlefield glory was to journey East with a mercenary company. All of his military training could not protect him from the bloodborn diseases that lay in the warmer climes, and having spent only four days in battle his true battle was with the fever that boiled his brain and killed him after two agonizing weeks.

Iduna was distraught, not just for her fallen love but for the swelling belly that would betray her as a ruined girl. In desperation, she journeyed to the foothills to beg for the help of a woodland witch. She pleaded with the woman to take away her shame and preserve her good name. The witch helped her.

At eighteen, Iduna was married to a lesser prince, Agnarr of the queen’s bloodline. He was a distant cousin of the prince who was due to inherit the throne, and the highest match that could be made for her at the time. He was kind, at least, and although he was a very pale shadow compared to her beloved Rasmun, Iduna could not fault his character.

A year after they married, the prince in line for the throne was taken with a winter chill and died. His father, the king, followed soon after. The prince’s brother held the throne for two years before he, for reasons best known to himself, threw himself out of his bedroom window. Iduna suddenly held the highest female title in the land.

At twenty-one, she had yet to carry a living child. The dowager queen regarded her with suspicion, she was otherwise healthy in every way, so why no children?

Iduna suspected the witch had done her job too well, but she kept her peace. Surely it couldn’t last forever?

Three years became five. Five became ten. At thirty years old even her husband, whose mind was so often on other things, was doubting her.

She returned to the witch. Threw herself at the woman’s feet. Her husband was starting to look at other ladies of noble birth, from families noted for their fertility. The witch gave her a potion that would unlock her womb, but she warned of possible unseen consequences.

Iduna drank the potion.

Her belly swelled, and at the end of nine months she produced a healthy baby girl.

At six months, the baby shot a bolt of ice through a chandelier and nearly killed her wet nurse.

…..

Elsa was jolted out of her thoughts by Lua’s return. It was past midnight now, and Merida had been waiting for the hawk since sunset. The bird flapped to the ledge to deliver her message and beg for food. Merida read the message for a moment, then sighed and rolled it up again. Elsa was glad of the opportunity to move onto another subject.

“Bad news from Cava?” she asked.

“No, no news. Same old nonsense. Doesn’t matter how many times I tell Maudie the coast is too dangerous, she’s still asking. She doesn’t even tell me what the boys are up to. I wouldn’t waste my time translating this one.”

“I still have to translate it. For security. It’s even more important now that you know about my abilities.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Merida muttered. “Everyone has brushes with magic. It’d be odd if you didn’t.”

“Even you?” Elsa laughed. “Would your Gods approve?”

“They’d not interfere. They didn’t make a fuss when I changed Mum into a bear.”

Elsa waited for a laugh to follow that comment, and was confused when Merida continued frowning at the letter. A bear? Had she heard that right?

“Excuse me, did you just say you turned….”

“Oh right, I never told you that story. I told Anna.”

“A bear? You turned your mother into a _bear?”_

“She started it,” Merida stated grimly.

“How….just, how?”

“You have ice powers, it’s not that strange.”

“Okay fine, but….why a bear?”

Merida shrugged. “It was all the _bandraoi_ could do, I think.”

Then, she did something Elsa wasn’t expecting. She plucked three hairs from her head and handed them to Elsa, carefree.

“It’d take too long to go into it, if you want to know what happened you could use that book thing to see,” she said, turning back to feed Lua.

It was a casual gesture on Merida’s part that spoke volumes. She trusted Elsa with her personal history, even after Elsa had revealed herself to be dangerous. Elsa could have cried.

But there was work to do, and with that awkward task out of the way she bid Merida goodnight and left her company, clutching the hairs close to her heart.

 


	9. Chapter Nine

**All or Nothing**

**Chapter Nine**

…..

Thank you all for the most recent batch of reviews, they really brightened my spirits. Life in general is a bit tough at the moment, I’m under a lot of pressure from my various jobs and if I had the time I’d have a new chapter out at least once a week, but thank you for being so patient with me.

…..

Shortly after she’d been given the hair strands by Merida, Elsa had taken them to the book; the idea of a queen being turned into a bear was just too tempting to leave alone.

Afterwards though, she felt an odd sense of sadness. To see how much Merida’s parents had clearly loved her, and she them, and yet they were perfectly fine with marrying her off to a man who was more or less a stranger. Although advantageous matches were made amongst the noble families in Arendelle from time to time, the bride in question was always given the option of refusing. Elsa couldn’t imagine presiding over three men fighting over a girl like dogs over a bone.

And despite the trouble they had caused each other, Merida and her mother held a genuine fondness for each other that was hard to see, knowing how horrifically Queen Elinor had died, and how her last thoughts were probably consumed by the thought that her beloved daughter was in the hands of the enemy.

Finally, a selfish notion on Elsa’s part niggled at her like a splinter. Queen Iduna had been fond of her, in the absent way one was fond of a household pet, right up until the accident with Anna. Afterwards she’d kept her distance, except for the odd occasion when Elsa demanded her attention, and even then the queen had preferred to let her husband take control. And the king, while he undoubtedly loved her, had treated her with a mix of fear and disdain for her powers. They’d both been considerably more affectionate towards Anna, but even that wasn’t saying much.

Elsa didn’t know if her parents had even liked each other. They respected each other, spoke civilly, never argued, but there was little warmth there. Of course she now knew that the queen had loved and lost with great passion before she married, and who knew if her father could have ever loved? He’d never taken a mistress as far as Elsa knew, but not once had she ever seen him kiss his queen, or put his arms around her, nothing much friendlier than linking her arm with his at formal functions.

Through the magic of the book, watching another king and queen passionately in love with each other after years of marriage, enamoured of the four children they had made together, Elsa couldn’t help feeling a little hurtful stab that she had never had this, and probably never would. And then she felt another stab for thinking this way, for they were dead and their children were scattered and distraught.

It could always be worse.

…..

After leaving her affairs with the advisors for the time being, Elsa made the preparations to go to the North Mountain to repair her castle. After a lot of internal debating, she found herself knocking on Merida’s door the night before she was due to depart.

Merida answered with a neutral expression, but Elsa could tell straight away that she’d been crying; her eyes were red and puffy and her hair was messier than usual. Elsa felt a rush of fury that she struggled to keep off of her face. This was Maudie’s doing; her latest letters had been full of details about how much the boys missed their sister, how they cried for their mother and father nightly, and why couldn’t she ask her benefactors to sail her to Cava to be with what was left of her family? Elsa had given the nursemaid the benefit of the doubt for Merida’s sake, but her patience was wearing thin.

“Did you need something?” Merida asked hoarsely.

“Yes, I do,” Elsa replied. “I’m making a journey to the North mountain to repair my ice castle, and I’d like you to accompany me. We leave tomorrow morning.”

Elsa was delighted to see that Merida brightened up considerably at the idea of a possible adventure.

“Are Kristoff and Anna going too?” she asked.

“No, Kristoff’s been working far too hard lately. I’ve sent him to the Avsik hot springs for a week, Anna’s gone with him to look after him.” They’d been sent with a chaperone, of course, but Anna had jumped at the chance to spend time with her fiancé.

“Then, who is going?”

“Just you and me. I don’t want to have too many people poking around in the snow. I think between your bow and my powers, we can handle any trouble that comes our way.”

Merida nodded in agreement, grinning widely.

“You can count on me,” she said. “Should I bring Lua? She’d come in handy.”

“Yes, why not? Meet me at the stables after breakfast, the royal guard will be with us to the base of the mountain.”

As she left, Elsa heard a little gleeful shriek from Merida’s room and smiled. It was risky to be alone with Merida miles away from anyone else, given how she’d been feeling lately. But if it made her so happy, where was the harm?

…..

The royal guard tucked them both into military stance in the centre of their group. Since the kidnapping, they’d been fiercely vigilant and Elsa anticipated having to talk them into leaving them at the mountain base. But that vigilance was paired with a regretful respect for Merida; they were deeply apologetic over her arrest and eager to show that they trusted her with the queen’s safety. Elsa only had to assure them twice that she’d be fine without them.

They travelled up the mountain on horseback until they reached an outpost, where they left the horses in the care of the farrier and continued on foot. Elsa could have used her powers to speed up their journey, but she was reluctant to interfere with the environment any more than she had been.

By midday, they were halfway up the mountain and began to hear the first mournful wolf calls. Elsa had been lucky enough to avoid them during her flight; she shivered to hear them now, and so close. But she was surprised to see that Merida didn’t even touch her bow, wholly unconcerned.

“You’re not worried about the wolves?” she called back to her. They were ten paces apart, Merida scanning the forest for something or other.

“No, they’re just letting the pack know we’re here,” Merida answered. “If we stay clear of the trees we should be fine. Lua will signal us if they get too close.”

Less than an hour later, a single wolf loped out of the forest towards them, Merida shot at the ground in front of it and it vanished back into the trees. That was the last they saw or heard of them.

The kitchens had packed food for them, but it was lutefisk, which Merida hated with a passion. She insisted on bringing down a migrating goose to cook later. Elsa watched her track the unfortunate bird with her eyes, arrow drawn, and flinched a little as she shot it through the neck. Lua caught it deftly as it plummeted towards the side of the mountain.

“You’ll thank me later when we’re not eating cold slimy fish,” Merida told her when Elsa grimaced at the bird’s corpse dropped in front of them.

“I don’t doubt it,” Elsa responded. “But I’ve never seen anyone hunt before. It’s a bit grim.”

“You do a beast more honour by taking its life with your own hands rather than letting someone else do it for you,” Merida shrugged. “Or so the Gods say. My mother had a problem with it too.”

“Is that so?” Elsa resisted the urge once again to tell Merida that there was only one God. “Did she disapprove of your hunting, then?”

“She disapproved of most things I did. But she didn’t understand,” Merida replied. “She wasn’t a Ceilt. She was Bretanol.”

Bretanol. Just like Madame Martine. Elsa made a mental note to ask about this later, as the snow was beginning to float down in droves and they couldn’t afford to tarry much longer.

…..

They finally reached the castle as the sun was setting. Elsa very much enjoyed the look on Merida’s face as she caught sight of the crystal spires glinting in the waning sunlight, wide-eyed and mouth hanging open. Allowing herself a little dramatic flair, she mended the staircase with a flick of her wrist, relishing the astonished gasp that came unbidden from Merida.

“You made all of this? In one night?” Merida wondered as they climbed the steps.

“Yes, well, it had built up over a few years,” Elsa feigned humbleness. Secretly she was delighted that she had managed to impress the other princess so much.

But as they opened the doors and Merida’s eyes were taken by the glimmering pillars and the glass-smooth floor, Elsa could only see the gaping holes in the structure and felt a pang of sadness. This was her castle, the first thing that had truly been hers and no-one else’s. It couldn’t have hurt more than if someone had taken a cannon and blown holes in it out of spite.

“This is amazing,” Merida sighed.

“Well, it was,” Elsa admitted sadly. “It’s not the way it was when I made it. I have quite a lot of work to do.”

“Anything I can help with?” Merida asked, looking eager.

“I’m afraid not. We got here in one piece, your job is mostly done. You can explore the castle if you want.”

She needed no further prompting, with a careless wave she was off up the staircase, probably to find the highest point in the castle. Elsa set about the tedious work of restoring the walls.

During her outburst, building the castle had come naturally as a great wave of energy was released from her body, pent up over years of holding it at bay. Now, however, her power had dimmed down to a steady trickle and she couldn’t fix all of the damage in one fell swoop. She patched the walls slowly, layering sheets of ice on top of each other carefully so as not to interfere with the standing pillars. She sent a ripple of frost to cover the gaps in the roof and encased them in solid ice to hold the domes in place.

The floor, thankfully, was completely intact, except for the spot where the chandelier had come down. Said chandelier had melted away, forming a lagoon in the centre of the room. She was about to freeze it over and cover it, but thought better on it and turned it into a small bath. Perhaps they could find a way to heat the water.

By the time the lower floor was finished, she was exhausted. It was nightfall by then, and the wolves were howling in force. She could tackle the upper floors in the morning.

As she suspected, she found Merida in the tallest tower. There was no ledge to sit on, just a thin rail, and she was leaning on her arms over the side, letting her legs dangle in the night’s breeze.

“There wouldn’t be much left of you if you fell from this height,” Elsa admonished her.

“I won’t fall,” Merida replied breezily, leaning out further. The wind caught her hair and stirred it around like a scarlet cloud.

“Why must you persist in making me worry so? At least keep your feet on the ground.”

“If I did, there’d be no point,” Merida answered. “If you keep your feet in the air, it feels like you could fly.”

Elsa laughed indulgently. It was a childish answer, but she sounded oddly sincere.

“And where would you fly to?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Home. You can see it from here.”

Elsa found herself looking across the horizon, despite herself. She saw nothing but sea and sky. Merida looked at her, and laughed at her confusion.

“It’s that way,” she said, releasing an arm to point off to the left, to an area where the clouds were thickest. “That’s Dunbroch. You can’t see it until you’re right on top of it, the fog is too heavy.”

Elsa squinted at the cloud, and truly it did seem to be concealing something in its depths.

“The Crone’s Temple is the highest point in the land,” Merida continued. “I’ve climbed as far as the Tooth, and I could see this mountain range from there. They’re directly across from each other.”

She turned again, to swing her feet in time with the breeze. Elsa inched forward and gently grasped Merida’s skirt between her fingers. Not because she was afraid she would fall, she was sure now that she wouldn’t.

But for a moment, it truly did look like Merida would fly away.

…..

Elsa constructed a brazier, thick enough to withstand a small fire, and winced as Merida plucked, gutted and debeaked the goose with unsettling ease. While she cooked the bird (and Elsa was grateful, for truly she didn’t like lutefisk much either) Elsa asked about Merida’s Bretanol roots.

“Well, she wasn’t completely Bretanol. More like half on her mother’s side. But she was raised there,” Merida responded when asked about her mother.

“How did your father manage to convince a Bretanol noble to marry him?” Elsa asked, truly baffled. “More to the point, how did he convince the country to let her go?”

Bretanolia was notorious for having a strict code of conduct, especially for its ladies. It was the place to send young noblewomen to teach them refinement. Elsa and Anna would have been sent there themselves if it hadn’t been for Anna’s accident.

“It’s a funny story, very romantic,” Merida laughed. “In a manner of speaking. Mum was supposed to marry this Casmellin noble, the contracts were signed and she got on the boat, but then halfway there they were attacked by southern slave traders and taken away.”

Elsa suppressed a shudder, her own ordeal still fresh in her mind.

“The Casmellin noble had a mercenary friend who had ties to Dunbroch,” Merida continued. “He got my Dad involved, because the slave ship was just off the coast. They got lost in the fog. Dad mustered a couple of men and attacked them, burned the ship and set all the prisoners free. But he got himself injured in the process. And my Mum ‘comforted’ him.”

Merida demonstrated with a crude gesture exactly what kind of ‘comfort’ the queen had offered the king. Elsa felt her cheeks burn.

“Good Lord,” she whispered.

“Well, you could hardly blame her,” Merida retorted. “He rescued her, he looked like he was going to die, she probably just got carried away. Anyway, he was fine. But obviously she couldn’t marry the Casmellin noble after that, so they made up some story about him fighting for her hand and winning and she got to marry him instead. And I was the surprise visitor at their wedding.”

Elsa stared.

“So that means…” she began, but couldn’t bring herself to say the word. Merida said it for her.

“My nickname until I was eight was ‘right royal bastard,’” she said with a grin. “Mum never admitted it, but everyone knew. _Everyone._ ”

Elsa found herself laughing, with a hand clapped over her mouth, but then she thought the better of it and laughed out loud. If it didn’t bother Merida, why should it bother her? Merida laughed along with her.

“You must think us very dull,” she said, wiping mirthful tears away. “My parents were terribly proper.”

“You must have some stories,” Merida said. “You can’t have a sister like Anna and not have at least one.”

“Well,” Elsa began, but stopped.

“I knew it! Come on, tell it!”

Elsa swallowed. This wasn’t a dignified story at all, and her parents had prized dignity above all things. But hell, they were dead and weren’t in a position to care what she said to one person.

“Okay, fine,” she relented. “Anna was about five, I think, and we started eating dinner formally with Mother and Father when we turned five. But Anna’s not very good at being formal…”

Merida nodded, hilariously because she was probably the only person in the kingdom who was as bad as Anna, if not worse.

“So we were getting through the fifth course, and Anna started complaining that her stomach was hurting. Father shushed her, we carried on. And then…she passed wind.”

“That’s it? A small child passed wind? How dare she,” Merida drawled.

“That’s not all,” Elsa told her. “Father was annoyed, he told her to stop. But once she got going, she couldn’t stop. And Father was getting angrier. And I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop, so I ended up passing wind too. That made Anna laugh harder, and pass wind harder too.”

Merida was staring at her now, seemingly caught between horror and delight.

“Father was really furious by now, he started pounding on the table, shouting about how ‘this is a proper family dinner and it’s not dignified to behave like this,’” she punctuated her impression by waving her fists in front of her face the way her father had. “And he got so angry with us that he passed wind too. Louder than both of us put together. And Mother just got up and left the table.”

There was silence as Elsa finished her story, lowered her fists and stared at her companion’s blank face, smiling uncertainly. Merida broke the silence with a loud snort, followed by a gale of hysterical laughter.

Elsa laughed too. She felt the connection between them solidify, growing warmer.

…..

There were no proper bedrooms in the castle, just great stretching halls. Elsa built two beds across from each other so they could sleep close to the dying embers of the fire. Merida fell asleep almost immediately, throwing herself into slumber as enthusiastically as she did everything else.

Elsa couldn’t sleep, exhausted as she was. With Merida so close, and silence stretching between them, she felt the pull grow stronger without conversation or work to distract her. Perhaps this had been a mistake.

Or, perhaps, an opportunity.

When would she ever get a chance like this again? At the palace, there were a hundred prying eyes watching her. Here, they were alone, miles from the nearest human being, and Merida was asleep. She’d probably never know what Elsa was doing.

What _was_ she doing?

Without even realizing, she’d crossed the room and was kneeling beside Merida’s bed. Merida was curled up like a cat, her face hidden by her hair. Elsa pushed a few strands back, her fingers brushed softly against Merida’s cheek and a slow burn fired up in the pit of her stomach. She tested the sensation, stroked her cheek again with purpose, from the hollow of her eye to the tip of her chin. If she woke up, Elsa could say she’d seen a spider or something.

But she didn’t wake.

Daring, Elsa pressed further. She trailed her fingers under Merida’s hair, along her neck. She stroked her collarbone under the neckline of her bodice, dipped along the cavity of her throat. Merida made a small exhalation but didn’t move.

The closure of the bodice was held with a single wide ribbon. If Elsa tugged on it, it would come loose and bare more skin for her to explore. It would be easy to tie again, and if Merida did wake, it could be excused away that it had come loose in her sleep and Elsa was fixing it for her, so she wouldn’t get cold.

Just as her hand caught the edge of the ribbon and began gently tugging, Merida made a small noise and shifted, rolled onto her back. Elsa backed away, heart thumping. She felt a wave of shame was over her; she’d almost crossed a line, barely thinking about it. The shame was banished to the back of her mind by an equally strong wave of desire.

Merida’s mouth was open slightly, her small rosebud lips inviting in the moonlight. Her face was turned slightly towards Elsa.

A kiss, then. What harm would a kiss do? She’d never know.

Elsa licked her lips in preparation. This would be her first kiss, maybe Merida’s too. Just a small one, enough to sate her, quench this obsession. She leaned in close, until she felt Merida’s breath fanning against her mouth.

But suddenly, Merida jolted in her sleep, frowning and mumbling something in Gaelic. Something that sounded like mother. Elsa pulled back to look at her properly, wondering if she should wake her, if it was a nightmare. Tears were gathering under her eyelids, but she didn’t cry out.

The moment passed, Merida sank back into silent sleep, and heartsick Elsa returned to her own cold bed.

 


	10. Chapter 10

All or Nothing

Chapter Ten

…..

Hey guys, as a wee break from the usual author’s note, here’s a fun game for anyone who feels like having their heart mercilessly pulped! Just listen to this song from _Wicked_ sung by Elsa’s actual voice actress and imagine she’s singing it in the context of this fic!

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly_9rmOE-L8>

There you go. Heart broken. Glad I could help.

…..

Despite feeling a touch feverish (not lovesick, she sternly told herself while somehow acknowledging it as a lie) Elsa slept well in the castle. Her slumber was untouched by dreams, comforted by the overcasted coolness and the soothing feel of resting in a place that had offered her sanctuary in a time of great distress.

She woke before Merida did, and found that her companion had lost half of her covers during the night and was frowning in her sleep. Averting her eyes from tracing the curve of Merida’s hip as she lay on her side, Elsa tucked the blanket around her carefully. Careful as she was though, her hand still brushed the bare skin of Merida’s wrist and she shivered, recalling how close she’d gotten that night. She dressed quickly, banishing the intrusive thoughts from her mind with all the effort she could spare, and left the hall.

To her dismay, the walls she had repaired already seemed to be melting. A spreading lake of frigid water was trickling down the staircase until she froze it into frost particles and used it to patch the walls again. Confused and saddened, she left the palace to sit in the semi-solid snow, looking at Arendelle’s capital in the distance.

A crackling sound and a light humming from behind her drew her attention to a crop of trees, where a familiar stunted shape covered by its own little cloud was shuffling.

“Olaf!” she cried.

“Hi Elsa,” the snowman called and waved as though he hadn’t been missing for months.

She scrambled to her feet and ran over to him, inspecting him for flaws as he smiled his guileless, buck-toothed grin. His face never changed even as he backed away from her.

“What are you doing? Stay still!” she commanded. “We’ve been worried about you!”

“Aw, that’s sweet. I’m okay though,” he said, but he still backed away. “I’ve just been up here, hanging out. How are you?”

“Olaf, come over here now! I have to make sure you’re not melting,” Elsa said through her teeth.

“I’m not melting. I’m pretty solid, actually,” he said, waving his stick arms up and down as if it would help.

“Then why haven’t you been home?” she said as she threw her arms up in desperation. “And where are Marshmallow and the little snows? If you know something, you have to tell me!”

“They’re all fine too,” Olaf grinned blithely, but his grin was starting to falter. “They’re on the side of the mountain, there’s a cold front there. It’s like a beach for us, we’ve been going there a lot. Like a holiday, kind of.”

“You shouldn’t need a cold front. It’s not even summer yet!”

“I know. But it’s too warm for us here,” he said.

“How can it be too warm?”

“It just is.”

He backed away again, and now Elsa could see that his grin wasn’t faltering at all. It was _melting._ His carrot nose was drifting slowly down towards his drooping mouth and his stick arms sank further into his torso. Horrified, Elsa ran to him as he scrambled back.

“Don’t! I need to fix you!” she shouted as he nearly tumbled down a hillock.

“No! Please! I’ll just go to the cold front, I’ll be fine,” he called back, even as his feet crumbled and he dragged himself along by his arms.

Finally, with an air of grim acceptance, Elsa stopped ten feet from where he was crawling away and shot out a flurry of solidly packed snow to reform his feet and anchor his features. She set him on his feet, supported by a tree stump.

“Why won’t you let me near you?” she asked him.

“I can’t tell you,” Olaf looked at his feet, like a child.

“You have to tell me.”

“You’ll be sad.”

“I’m already sad. Tell me what you know. How can I fix it if I don’t know?”

Olaf fidgeted, waved his arms in a helpless motion and whimpered.

“It’s… I don’t know,” he whimpered at last. “You’re different. You’re warm now. You’re too warm for us.”

“What?” She’d been expecting something like this since he backed away from her the first time. It still hurt to hear it.

“It’d be fine if you were always warm, but you were always cold before. And now sometimes you get warm, and then you get really cold. It comes in waves. And we don’t know what to do.”

“I haven’t been doing anything different,” she told him, though he could probably tell she was lying to herself and to him. “What has changed?”

As if on cue, Merida blustered out of the castle, yawning and stretching. Elsa’s eyes caught and traced the lithe movement, and Olaf’s features sank again as he tried desperately to hold them up.

“What? It’s Merida? She’s causing the melt?” Elsa cried desperately, hoping against hope that somehow it was someone else’s fault.

“No, it’s not her, she’s totally normal,” Olaf answered shakily. “But you got warm again. When she came out.”

Elsa’s heart sank.

“I’m sorry,” she told him brokenly, as though it could somehow fix him.

“And now you’re cold again. That would be fine, or you could be warm when you want, but we never know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Honestly….we’re scared.”

Her fluctuating moods were causing the melt.

Because of course they were.

The ice castle run off that nearly caused a plague. The snowstorm after she’d been kidnapped. The quagmire when Merida rescued her. The mountain ice melting as she and Merida grew closer, but not close enough for Elsa’s liking. And a rush of unfulfilled, guilty lust that was threatening the lives of a hundred sentient ice creatures.

Would anything ever _not_ be her fault?

“Please don’t be scared,” she begged Olaf, backing away from him. “I’ll try to fix this. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Olaf smiled kindly, though it pierced her as keenly as a frown would have. “You made us. We wouldn’t be alive at all if it wasn’t for you. I’ve had a good life. I’d like to live a bit more but if I didn’t…I did pretty good.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she shook her head. “I will fix this. Somehow. No more talk of melting, okay?”

“Okay,” he nodded.

Afraid of melting he may have been, but above all he was a kind little soul. He went to her side, even as she backed away, and held her hand as she let a few stray tears fall.

…..

No doubt Merida would have loved to meet Olaf, but after that encounter Elsa couldn’t bring herself to risk it. She painted on a bright demeanour and engaged her brain in practicing Merida’s Dellian grammar with her on the trip home. They were met by the royal guard at the outpost and escorted to the castle. Merida was dragged away by Anna within minutes of arriving in the hall, and Elsa waved them both away with forced casualness.

In the confines of her office, she debated with herself. There was no way she could do this alone, but her advisors…. who could be trusted? Holm was stuffy and traditional. Heino was prone to hyperbole. Lassen was spiteful, for all his intellect. Bech was nice, but a gossip.

Makkenon though… he was often the voice of reason at meetings. He was slightly paternalistic, not much of a sense of humour but he was kind. Moreover, he was tight-lipped. He was the best candidate. Decision made, she sent for him.

He arrived within the hour, pleasantly surprised that she had asked for him. He was a stout man, long faced and bearded, in his sixties, with kind grey eyes. When he saw how pale she was, how grim, he leaned in and smiled to reassure her.

“Something is troubling you, your highness,” he began, pouring tea from the pot she’d ordered into her cup. “I will help you in any way I can.”

“I don’t know if you can help. I don’t know if anyone can,” she told him. Tears pricked her eyelids, but she blinked them back, refused to let them fall.

“Well, tell me of your problem. Then we shall see what can be done.”

How to tell him? How to even put it into words?

“It’s a very…. _personal_ problem,” she began shakily.

“It will not leave this office if you so wish.”

Best to just say it. Get it over with.

“I believe I am in love,” she blurted out, and swallowed.

Makkenon exhaled sharply. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that.

“That is troubling. We did discuss this after your coronation, if you recall….”

“Yes, I remember,” she halted his speech with her hand.

After her second crowning, she and her advisors had unanimously decided that Elsa would never marry and bear children, and her powers would die with her. She symbolically married the nation of Arendelle in a chaste ceremony a year after her coronation. Anna would bear the heirs to the throne, and if she happened to be barren they had a distant cousin who could be crowned. Anna was in good health though, so this was an outside possibility. At the time she couldn’t have imagined falling for anyone, and was somewhat relieved by the prospect of a life of chastity.

“If you were to become pregnant, it could be disastrous,” Makkenon continued. “Out of wedlock, and possibly with your powers which I must remind you are very unstable in an infant. We couldn’t risk it.”

“Well, fortunately there’s no chance of that. My potential paramour lacks the equipment, as far as I know,” she told him dryly.

He stroked his beard with befuddlement, before his eyes widened with clarity.

“Oh,” he swallowed. “It is a woman, then?”

“Yes. A woman.”

“Well,” his face went red and he looked down at the desk. “Such things aren’t unheard of….”

“It’s not just any woman...”

“It’s that red-haired homeless girl, isn’t it?” he suddenly snapped. “Of course it is. That’s why she’s still here. I’ll be honest, your highness, we had our suspicions, we did consider that she was trying to seduce you but we credited you with enough intelligence not to…”

“She’s not homeless,” Elsa snapped back, so sharply that Makkenon shrank back a little. “Her home is here. She earned it, twice over! And she did not seduce me, she’s done absolutely nothing wrong. She has no idea how I feel.”

They stared each other down as they gathered their composure.

“All right,” he mumbled at last. “That’s good. If she doesn’t know… and you’re not…”

Elsa laughed bitterly, hiding her eyes.

“I don’t even know if she’s that way inclined,” she said. “And even if she was, I don’t know if she’d want anything to do with me.”

“I must strongly advise that it should stay this way,” he said sternly. “You couldn’t have picked a more unsuitable person. You may think that she has a home here, but truthfully in the eyes of your city she is a refugee with nothing, from a nation known to be hostile. To go from that to the person closest to the queen, it casts suspicions on your character.”

“Well, I can hardly marry her, can I? I wasn’t planning on telling anyone.”

“Affairs can be conducted with discretion, but the consequences of someone finding out would be disastrous. More so than if a king had a mistress,” he continued. “Many kings have had mistresses without raising the ire of their people. But the queen must be chaste. I know it’s unfair, but that’s how it is. Best cast it from your mind.”

“I can’t. It’s affecting my powers.”

“What?” Now he paled, and looked to the mountain from the window.

“My moods have been up and down a lot lately, and the ice has responded in kind,” she said as she sank back in her chair, suddenly exhausted. “The ice on the mountain isn’t solid, it’s melting and flooding Reinemont. And the ice creatures are melting too. Olaf says I’ve been too warm.”

Makkenon stroked his beard, deep in thought. Elsa watched his expressions change without feeling much of anything.

“You say you’re in love,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

She threw up her hands.

“How does anyone know? Do you want details? I love looking at her, I think about her all the time, I want to touch her and I can barely stop myself from doing it….”

He stopped her there, cheeks burning again.

“Have you considered that it’s not love at all? Maybe it’s just a rather fervent lust. That can be dealt with.”

Feeling a little sick, she motioned for him to continue.

“There are girls for this kind of thing… girls who can be trusted to be discreet. If you were to…dispel your lust with one of these girls, your moods would even out…”

“You’re talking about a prostitute,” Elsa growled. “Speak plainly.”

“I know of a brothel, of an excellent standard. It caters for many people of higher standing, and it can be trusted to be prudent. There are girls there that cater to your …needs. I can arrange for one to come here.”

Unthinkable. Her stomach twisted.

But what other choice did she have?

She swallowed, hard, and nodded.

…..

Two nights later, she received a notice from Makkenon that the girl would arrive that night, after midnight, during the changing of the guard, escorted to the chamber that connected to Elsa’s through a sally port. The port had been used by king’s mistresses before, and only the advisors knew of it.

Elsa was so nervous she couldn’t eat. Her hands shook as she wrote up documents. She couldn’t even bear to look at Merida. She felt like she was betraying her. She went to her chambers early, begging illness. Everyone agreed that she didn’t look well and let her go. She sent for wine, and it was brought promptly.

The hours ticked by. She changed her clothes twice as she sweat right through them. She pinned her hair up, and shook it out, and pinned it up again. She paced the room feverishly. How was one supposed to prepare for a visit from a prostitute?

As midnight approached, she sequestered herself in the bathroom, feeling like she would be sick at any moment. She jumped when the door of the sally port clicked open and she heard the soft shuffle of someone’s feet on the carpet.

“Hello?” a melodious voice called softly from inside the bedchamber.

Elsa stilled, and the footsteps pattered around the room. The girl inside made small humming noises to herself. Elsa dared a peek through the open doorway and saw her, standing before her long mirror inspecting her face.

With a sinking heart, Elsa regarded this girl at the mirror. It was glaringly obvious that Makkenon had picked her out himself. He’d chosen the girl who most resembled Merida.

Her hair was red, a pale almost pinkish tone of blonde that wasn’t even close to Merida’s bright locks, and it had been rag-curled. The spirals were too perfectly formed, too evenly spaced. What she could see of the girl’s body under a clinging sheath dress was small-breasted, her hips and behind jutted out generously. She was about the same height as Merida, and her pixie-like face was similar in shape, but it seemed pinched in the middle somehow, giving this girl a sly look.

Unconsciously, Elsa had been slowly making her way out the door, and now the girl turned, saw her companion and gasped.

“Your highness! Beg your pardon….” she demurred, eyes wide and nervous. “I was told to meet someone here….”

“Yes. You were,” Elsa mumbled. Her mouth felt dry.

“Oh…” the girl gasped again, and stopped to regard Elsa’s stance, the wine bottle on the table, the bed that hadn’t been slept in. “I… was to meet you? Truly?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?” Elsa asked, hoping it was.

“A problem?” the girl giggled. “It would be an _honour._ I had no idea your highness was interested in such things.”

“Nobody knows. I should like it to stay that way.”

“Say no more,” the girl grinned. “My lips are sealed beyond this room. Milord chose me for my discretion, amongst other things.”

She punctuated this with a saucy waggle of her hips, and for the first time Elsa felt a giddy jump and a rush of warmth. With Flossie, she had only been permitted to look. With Martine, she had touched once and never again. Merida tortured her with what she could not have. But this girl…

This was a girl that would never reject her. She couldn’t.

“What is your name?” Elsa asked.

“Meena,” the girl answered perkily.

In one smooth move, she reached for the clips of her thin dress and snapped them loose, and as she shimmied the dress fell to her ankles. Elsa gasped as though she’d been struck. Unclothed, Meena’s breasts seemed to swell, her nipples pink and pointed. Her belly was slightly rounded and smooth, her legs beautifully shaped. Elsa’s eyes were drawn to the sparse hair between her legs, the plump vaginal lips just about visible and glistening in the dim candlelight.

In this light, caught at the right angle, Meena did look something like Merida.

As the thought occurred to her, Elsa felt a shock of heat hit her at the base of her pelvic floor; the muscles contracted and she felt a rush of answering wetness. Meena smiled invitingly, pleased to have had such an effect. She crossed the room and stood before Elsa, arms held out in welcome.

“I hope my body is to your liking. I am very pleased to serve one as lovely as you.”

Hesitant, Elsa reached for her breasts. Smiling blissfully, Meena pressed them into her grasp.

 


	11. Chapter Eleven

**All or Nothing**

**Chapter**

**…..**

Casual author’s note: I apologize for the long wait between chapters. I work in the caring industry and I’m currently providing crisis care that has kept me exceptionally busy. Luckily I may be getting something of a break soon so more chapters more often! Woot!

…..

“I think I should inform you,” Meena began, somewhat hesitantly, “that you are wasting quite a lot of money.”

Elsa looked up from where she had been staring pointedly at the floor, and not Meena’s spread-eagled form on the bed. Truly, she wondered how it had taken so long for Meena to speak up.

After their first encounter, things had quickly gone downhill. She had touched Meena’s breasts, and felt glad of it at the time, but as soon as Meena had taken Elsa’s hand to touch her lower, she pulled away, consumed by an odd sort of terror.

“I don’t mind, of course,” Meena continued, turning to lie on her side, stroking her hip with deliberate sultriness. “It’s quite the easiest job I’ve had. But I fail to see what you’re getting out of this.”

Every meeting had gone the way of the first. Meena arrived just after midnight, shed her clothes, drank a cup or two of wine and tried to encourage Elsa to touch her. And Elsa shied away every time, as though she was afraid the contact would harm her in some way, or that she would harm the young prostitute. They would make awkward small talk, or sit in silence at opposite ends of the room, until the hour was up. Meena would put her clothes back on and leave, no more dishevelled than the state she had arrived in.

She had gotten something out of it, though. Thanks to Meena’s lack of inhibitions, Elsa was now very familiar with the female form, and all of its little dips and folds and valleys. She’d never seen so much even in biology log books. There was also Meena’s habit of touching herself out of boredom, so that now Elsa knew how to bring pleasure to both herself and someone else.

“Does it concern you?” Elsa asked.

Meena sat up suddenly, sat on the bed with her legs crossed and looked across at the mirror. She began piling up her hair on top of her head and frowning at her reflection.

“A little, your highness. How freely might I speak?”

“You may speak as freely as you wish.”

Reaching into the pocket of the dress she had discarded on the floor, Meena retrieved a long ribbon. She deftly tied it around her hair, securing it in place. Elsa’s eyes tracked the gentle rocking of her breasts as she did so.

“You’re not the first shy client I’ve ever had,” Meena shrugged. “But it is odd that you haven’t shown any interest in touching me. Does my body not please you?”

“That’s not it, you are very beautiful,” Elsa told her truthfully.

“Thank you for sparing my vanity,” Meena smiled.

The tousled updo was far more appealing to Elsa’s eyes than her oddly uniform curls. She felt a fleeting twinge of longing.

“What I think,” Meena began with a deep breath, “is that you desire someone else. And only that someone else.”

Elsa gulped before she could stop herself, and Meena’s sharp eyes caught it.

“Spot on,” she laughed gently. “I did wonder why I was asked to curl my hair. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked to stand in for someone.”

“Really?” Elsa asked, and then inwardly cursed herself. She was revealing far too much to this girl.

“There are lots of people out there who want someone they can’t have,” Meena said breezily. “Sometimes they pay quite a lot of money to hire an excellent substitute. I once had a client who brought me his wife’s dress to wear while we coupled. She was only out of the country for a month.”

“So this is normal for you?”

“Quite,” Meena said as she turned back to look at Elsa. “The only instruction I was given was to curl my hair. I’m sure there’s more to your muse than that. She must be very beautiful.”

Merida’s form came unbidden to Elsa’s mind, staring serenely out at the horizon from her perch in the tower.

“Yes,” Elsa murmured. “She is.”

“And refined? A perfect lady,” Meena offered.

Elsa laughed a little to herself, as she remembered Merida sprawled out in the hallway after she crashed the bike into the wall.

“No, not at all.”

“Ah, a diamond in the rough perhaps? That would make sense,” Meena shrugged. “There are refined ladies everywhere, I imagine it would take someone quite extraordinary to capture your attention.”

She removed the ribbon from her hair and shook it out. The uniform curls had lost their structure and sprayed out over Meena’s head in a haphazard mess. For a sharp moment, there was a resemblance and it hit Elsa hard, made her pulse jump.

Meena noticed, and smiled. Her hands went to her hair again and she disrupted the curls some more.

“Better?” she asked.

“Better,” Elsa agreed.

…..

Summer blew in from the east, damp and humid from the remaining moisture in the air, and Elsa realized with a start that Merida had been given sanctuary in Arendelle for a full year. Anna wanted to celebrate, but was discouraged by both Elsa and Merida, neither of whom wanted a reminder of what had driven Merida to Arendelle in the first place.

Elsa began the summer on a bad note. Hiring a prostitute had not solved her problem, indeed if anything it had made her feel more hopeless than ever. Days were filled with trade papers and writs from nobles and endless, endless paperwork. Nights were filled with feverish dreams of bare female flesh that sucked her in and swallowed her whole as she sank her hands into it.

Miserably, she raked through her memories for something good, something happy to sustain her, but it did nothing. She’d been an unhappy, lonely child as she was an unhappy, lonely adult.

Anna tried her best to bring Elsa out of her malaise, but only succeeded in making her feel worse for bringing distress to her sister. In the end she had to quite pointedly, and more harshly than she meant to, tell Anna to leave her be. Merida noticed too, but unlike Anna she recognized that Elsa needed to be left in peace to work things out herself, and Elsa was grateful for it.

One night, well past midnight as the castle slept, Elsa paced from room to room, unable and unwilling to sleep. This happened to her often in summer; the heat somewhat disrupting her internal chemistry in some fashion. She found herself idly strolling around the table in the small dining chamber where Anna, Kristoff and Merida had eaten supper without her.

A small glimmer, caught in a shaft of moonlight, grabbed her attention. It was a single strand of hair. Merida’s hair. That in itself wasn’t unusual. Merida’s hair was so thick she left traces of herself anywhere she spent a lot of time. She could easily lose as much hair as Elsa possessed on her entire head and not even notice. It wasn’t so strange. And yet….

Merida’s childhood had been a happy one, as far as Elsa had heard. What harm to live someone else’s happiness, for just a moment? She’d never know.

Before she could even think it through properly, she’d made her way to the memory book’s chamber and was dropping the hair into an open page.

_One happy memory,_ she whispered to herself in her mind. _One happy memory, that’s all I want._

Hr surroundings dissolved and reformed, placing her in a large chamber full of wooden furniture and tapestries of elaborate knotwork. Every surface was covered with scrolls, boxes and odd instruments that looked scientific. Elsa was so caught up looking at the instruments that she barely noticed the man in the corner until he moved.

She blinked, unsure if she was seeing him correctly. The man was clearly an eastern traveller, from Myohen or perhaps even Dionhae. He was dressed in painted silk, his long straight black hair and beard tied in complicated knots. He was peering into a glass instrument, tapping out some sort of pattern on a scroll full of neat eastern-language characters. Elsa wondered if she’d somehow gotten the hair she’d found confused for someone else’s, until the door of the chamber opened and Merida stumbled in.

Elsa laughed, for this younger, much smaller Merida was struggling to carry a book that was easily half her size. Her tousled head just peeked out over the book’s bindings, but she made it as far as halfway across the room before she toppled over and the man at the window took notice.

“Princess,” he addressed her half-admonishingly, taking the book and helping her up. “I did not hear you come in.”

“I need you to read me this book,” she chirruped back.

“Can not your mother read books for you? I have many studies…” the man said in thickly-accented, rather broken Gaelic.

“She’s busy with the babies. So you have to do it,” Merida told him imperiously, followed by a sheepish smile. “Please?”

“Well, you return my book to me, so I suppose is good trade,” the man shrugged, inviting her to sit with him on a low bench. Elsa stepped over to look at the book over their shoulders.

It was indeed an eastern book, full of the strange letters that had plagued Elsa’s studies at fifteen. Here and there she recognised the characters for _house_ and _wind_ and _fire._ But the words were merely a dull companion to the book’s real content; page upon page of bright, stunning imagery. The man leafed through the pages until Merida stopped him at one particular picture.

“That one! I want you to read that one!” she begged him, hopping in her seat with excitement.

“Is very good story, but very sad,” the man told her. “Make many little girls cry. I think if I make princess cry king put me in prison, yes?”

“I won’t cry,” Merida huffed, folding her stubby little arms.

“Very good. I will remember this when I am in prison, so cold, how brave princess is. It will warm my heart.”

He chuckled to show he wasn’t serious, and Merida laughed with him. Elsa smiled to see their warmth.

“In beginning, there is men on earth and men on moon,” the eastern man began, tracing the letters with his finger. “Moon is cold and dark, and there is no water there. When the moon is fat, the men of the moon fly to earth to wash their bodies. They have wings, very big and very bright, made of fire. They must take wings off to wash. Then they fly home.”

The illustration showed a flock of these winged people, just tiny dots of light, floating from the moon to the earth. Merida pressed her face close to the page to see them up close, until the man turned to the next page.

“The moon has many beautiful maidens, but Lua was most beautiful of all. Her mother bathed for a year and a day in light of moon while she was growing inside her. Her wings were so bright they rivalled the stars.”

Lua. The name of Merida’s falcon.

“Lua plucked her wings from her back and left them on the riverbank as she washed. There was a king with a hungry eye, he watched the moon maidens wash and he wanted one for his bride. He took Lua’s wings from riverbank, for hers were biggest and brightest and best.”

Though his Gaelic was awkward in places and shot through with the odd intonations of his own native tongue, he was a masterful storyteller. Merida (and Elsa behind her) stared at the book, transfixed.

“Lua tried to find her wings as her sisters flew away from her. They could not stay to help her, for if they did their wings would burn away. Lua cried an ocean as they all left her.”

The picture showed a woman, naked and white, crouched over on a riverbank weeping, trying to cover herself with her hair. A lump formed in Elsa’s throat despite herself; the artist had conveyed the despair so keenly that it felt real.

“The king made himself known, he told her he heard her cries and took pity on her. He would make her his wife and protect her for all her days.”

“He’s a liar,” Merida said, scowling comically at the book. “She shouldn’t marry him.”

“But she did, because she was alone and frightened and he was very kind to her.”

Merida huffed and kicked the bench with childish disgruntlement.

“She was happy,” the man continued, trying to placate her. “She gave the king four children, two boys and two girls. But when the moon was fat, she would weep for she missed her home. One day, the children played in an empty chamber and they knocked a….what is this thing?”

The man stopped to point out a detail in one of the pictures.

“A trunk?” Merida offered.

“Yes, a trunk, yes,” he nodded. “Inside the trunk was the moon maiden’s wings. Her daughters brought the wings to her, to say _Look, mother, how beautiful these wings are, what wonderful bird did they belong to?_ And Lua knew she had been tricked. She put her children to bed, kissed them goodbye, and she put her wings back on to fly to the moon, to her home.”

The picture on the next page was breathtaking; Lua in full flight across the night sky, her brilliant wings casting light all around them.

“But Lua missed her beloved children, and she could no longer return to earth, for if she did her wings would burn away. So once a year, after six fat moons, she flies over earth looking for her children. And so it has been for a thousand years.”

“Six fat moons, that’s tomorrow,” Merida declared.

“Yes, it is.”

“I heard you talking about it.”

“Ah, so that’s why you took my book?”

“Yeah,” Merida didn’t even bother denying it. “When is she going to fly?”

“Day after tomorrow,” the man told her. “But will be very late. You will be in bed.”

“I won’t,” Merida huffed, hopping down from the bench. “I’ll stay up. I want to see her.”

“You’ll have to go to tallest point in castle. She will fly very far away from here.”

“I’ll go on the roof of the tower.”

“You will be careful, yes?”

“Yes. I never fall.”

As soon as the words were said, the room dissolved away and Elsa found herself in a forest, lit only by the beams of the almost full moon. Merida was ahead of her, running over paths only she was able to see, unmindful of brambles and thorns and rocks in her way. Elsa’s line of vision followed her; she was half-wearing a woollen dress over a cotton nightgown and only one shoe.

Evidently she had fallen asleep, and unwilling to let the opportunity pass to see Lua herself, she was tracking her down.

She stopped at a tree, sized it up for a moment and clambered up with astonishing speed. Her knees were a scraped mess, her hands no better, there were thorns and leaves and other detritus caught in her hair, but it didn’t matter to her at all, judging from the look on her face when she reached the top branch of the tree to find her target. She lit up, mouth gaping and eyes huge.

Elsa turned to see what Merida was seeing, and her own mouth dropped open.

It was a comet, of course it was.

But it was so close, so brilliant. Close enough to see, if you were looking, the shape of a woman outlined in the tendrils of pale fire, her trailing hair and her gently swaying limbs, her expression serene. Her wings reached to the sky and gracefully dipped towards the earth.

“Over here! I’m over here!”

Elsa looked back and, alarmingly, saw Merida’s tiny frame balanced on the very tip of the tallest branch, half-jumping and waving furiously at the comet. But she couldn’t help laughing at the sight of the little girl trying to get the attention of a celestial body.

It may have been a trick of the light, or some form of optical illusion, but it seemed like Lua turned slightly and opened her eyes. Elsa could even discern a smile on the pale face. Merida noticed it too, she abruptly stopped jumping and waving and settled for standing in a pleased daze.

“Wow,” Elsa heard her murmur, before the tree branch cracked and Merida fell out of the tree. The vision fell with her, leaving the echo of a surprised yelp. Elsa was suddenly back in the chamber, alone, looking at the empty pages of the book. She left the chamber hurriedly, and without thinking made her way to the tower where Merida spent most of her time.

Lua was there, in her aviary. She woke as Elsa approached and shrieked a greeting to her, looking her over for food. Elsa reached in and stroked her feathers absently, thinking back on her namesake with a light heart. It was a borrowed happiness, but a happiness nonetheless.

…..

Her lightened mood persisted through the week, so that even Meena remarked upon it on their next meeting.

“It makes a nice change,” she shrugged as she kicked her dress away. “I do prefer clients to come to me with glad hearts. But I am curious.”

“I’m sure you are,” Elsa replied blithely, sitting across from the bed and pouring wine into two cups.

Meena took one of the cups and lay on her front on the bed, idly caressing her calf with her foot.

“Could it be that your lady friend is behind your bright disposition? If it was so, I would be very happy for you.”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Maybe not the way you imagine.”

Meena laughed and ruffled her hair in a way that made Elsa’s stomach do little jumps.

“Fine, keep your secrets. You could tell me, you know. Whores are very good at keeping secrets. But I can’t make you tell me, and I won’t.”

Elsa could not have said what she intended to do when she posed her question to Meena. Perhaps she had wanted to subject her to the same probing she was facing. Or perhaps she had simply wanted to get the subject away from Merida. She was starting to realize how acutely she had forced herself into Merida’s personal thoughts and it was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable.

“And what of you, Miss Meena?” she began, teasing. “What secrets do you have?”

Meena laughed again, sat up to display her nude body to better effect, knees spread wide, arms arching over her head to push her breasts out.

“I have no secrets,” she told Elsa, shimmying flirtatiously. “Where on earth do you think I’d keep them?”

“What of your family? What do they think of your lack of secrets?”

Meena’s face didn’t drop its smile, but her eyes betrayed a wariness. She dropped to lie on her side again.

“I’d think they would pay it no mind,” she shrugged, taking a sip of wine.

“Do they know of your occupation?” Elsa probed further, now intrigued.

Meena laughed again, but it was tinged with bitterness.

“Why should it matter? Nobody is born a whore, and I should think no-one imagines their daughter to be one unless they are a monster.”

“Well, why did you become…what you are?” Elsa couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

Meena fixed her with a hard look. There was no anger in it, curiously enough, just a raw sort of pain.

“Do you know Erstely? It’s a small village. Near Reinemont,” Meena asked.

Elsa shook her head. She had never heard of it.

“No matter, it’s gone now. I lived there, with my family. My parents were farmers, so were my brothers. My sisters married other farmers. It was all frightfully dull. Then Sangonelle went to war, and the army invaded Erstely on the way for supplies.”

Elsa wanted her to stop, she could tell where this was going, but it was far too late.

“They took my father’s livestock and his grain. When he objected, they killed him,” Meena continued. “My brothers objected to that, so they killed them too. And then my mother objected, and you can guess what happened. Everyone who objected was killed. I was hiding in the butcher shed with my youngest brother, so we survived. But there was nothing left of Erstely, so we had to leave.”

She took a gulp of wine, and smiled with satisfaction at Elsa’s ashen face.

“We joined the camp followers. Wherever there’s an army, there’s followers. But my brother was quite a sickly boy, he always got the best of our food to keep him strong, and medicine when we could afford it. I didn’t have good food, or medicine. All I had was the clothes I was wearing, and what was under them. Thankfully there’s many a good officer that will trade food and medicine for a fresh young body.”

“I’m so sorry,” Elsa mumbled.

“It wasn’t your doing,” Meena shrugged. “It got me what I wanted, and they were quite kind to me when they could have been cruel. I can’t begrudge them. By the time we reached Arendelle my virtue was well and truly gone, but I decided to carry on as I had. I don’t like scrubbing floors, and farm work bores me, and I quite like coupling. Why not be a whore?”

“You sold your virtue to save your brother, that’s very noble,” said Elsa, hoping to salvage the conversation somehow.

“My brother never made it to Arendelle,” Meena laughed without humour. “He died not even a week after we left Erstely. I sold my virtue for nothing.”

Elsa clutched the arms of her chair, wanting to cry and scream at the same time, and she couldn’t have said why.

“Do you feel sorry for me, your highness?” Meena asked, lacing her question with a touch of cruelty. “I wouldn’t. There’s not a person in Arendelle who could have looked at me when I arrived here and declared that I wasn’t a virgin. I could have found work. I chose to be a whore. I like being naked with men and women, I like getting pleasure and giving pleasure back. I like the money it brings me, and I like the fine houses I am brought to, and I especially like the gifts they give me.”

She rose to her feet again to stand directly in front of Elsa. She plunged her fingers into her hair and ruffled it fiercely, a look of defiant pride on her face. She smiled with satisfaction as Elsa blushed and looked away, because the resemblance to Merida was never clearer than at that moment.

“Don’t waste your pity on me,” she growled low. “Feel sorry for yourself.”


	12. Chapter 12

**All or Nothing**

**Chapter Twelve**

 

Author’s note: So the crap that kept me from living my actual life is slowly petering out and I’m finally getting my free time back, so thankfully I can get this fic updated more often. At the same time I am working very hard on my original fiction, which I’ve never really had time to concentrate on, and all going well if I can get it out there it would free me up to write both fanfic and regular fic.

With that said, I’m looking for a wee bit of help. I’d like if someone who has read and reviewed this fic would be willing to have a look at and critique my original work. More or less a beta reader, who would be willing to give me some measure of agreement to keep my work safe, If you think you’d be up for this, please send me a message here or on my Tumblr: <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/aornff>

Now, onto the fun. This chapter was written especially for Spooky Scary Skeleton month. Bonus points if you can spot the nineties pop culture reference.

…..

The meetings with Meena that followed her outburst were painfully awkward, though they had each apologised for going too far. Meena’s mannerisms had been odd ever since; her hair got progressively messier, her voice took on a strange mocking cadence and as she drank Elsa’s wine liberally, her movements were less controlled and more fumbling.

But this new Meena struck a chord somewhere in Elsa’s being, and she tracked the movements of her body even more fervently than she had before, even if she couldn’t bring herself to touch her.

At last, Meena seemed to gather up the courage to talk frankly to the queen.

“Your problem,” she began, taking a gulp of wine before continuing, “is that you are not truthful.”

“Oh? You think I’m a liar? That’s a bold statement,” Elsa responded neutrally.

“No, not a liar. A liar lies to others and I think you just leave some things out,” Meena continued. “But you are not truthful to yourself. You deny yourself and you make your own problems. Things would be so much better if you were true to yourself.”

“I am as true to myself as any queen can be,” Elsa laughed without mirth. “It’s easy for a prostitute to tout such lines….”

“Prostitutes are excellent liars, we lie all the time,” Meena threw out flippantly. “How many times do you think I say “I’m so happy to see you!” Or “You’re my favourite client.” Or “Oh, it’s so big, I want it so much!”

She intoned that last phrase with convincing breathy moans, contorting her face in pleasure, before the expression melted and she was wryly smiling again. Elsa looked away, flushing. How was she even supposed to respond to _that?_

“You are not happy,” Meena continued. “I think any queen’s subject would like to see her queen happy, even the lowliest of whores.”

Elsa wanted to stay quiet, but Meena’s words held a hard truth, and she was so very tired.

“I don’t think I’m capable of being happy.”

Astonishingly, Meena’s hard green eyes glittered with sudden tears. She rose from the bed and dressed hurriedly, snapping the clips of her dress with force and throwing on her cloak. Before Elsa could even think to stop her, she was at the sally port.

“You can call me back whenever you decide to let me help you. I will stay away until then,” she said, and was gone.

…..

The next day, a lingering malaise was cast over Elsa. She didn’t feel sad, or angry, just numb.

_“I was a fool to think hiring a prostitute would help.”_

Her turgid mood was actually lifted at the unexpected sight of Anna tiptoeing down the hall to meet her, pulling on her braids nervously. Here was someone with a problem that could actually be fixed.

“What’s wrong, Anna?” she asked, and frowned as Anna jumped.

“I need you to talk to Merida,” Anna replied, grimacing.

“What? About what? Did you two have a fight?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Anna groaned, yanking her braids hard. “It’s kind of a long story….”

Elsa sighed, ordered some coffee from a passing maid and ushered Anna into her office.

“Okay, so we were talking about birthdays,” Anna began as Elsa was already mentally rolling her eyes. “And, like, how was I supposed to know Dunbroch doesn’t do birthdays? I mean, she gave me a present anyway so it was okay but how do you _not_ do birthdays? And no Yuletide either so no presents at all! That’s just crazy, right?”

“Different cultures,” Elsa reminded her. “It’s not for us to say what’s right or wrong.”

“Yes, yes, I know. That’s not the point. So I was asking her what kind of stuff they do celebrate and it was all mostly feasting after war and stuff but they have these season celebration things and there was one she was talking about that sounded kinda fun, and I said ‘hey, I’d like to do that,’ and it got out of control and now she thinks we’re going celebrate it. Tonight.”

Elsa blinked.

“That….doesn’t sound too bad….we hold Moyhen’s moon festival here, and Nullartey’s sea songs…”

“Noooo,” Anna moaned. “This is different! It’s this thing where the dead rise up and walk the earth and they kidnap anyone they find outside and eat them! There’s this whole thing where everyone locks themselves in their houses so they don’t get eaten and they have to hang this stuff on the doors and there’s heads and stuff, it’s really freaky!”

Ah. Anna, surprisingly brave when it came to throwing herself into the path of danger, was something of a coward when it came to spooky stories. She always had been. An old nanny had once told them a story about an ogre under a bridge and she had refused to cross bridges for almost two years.

“She’s in the market right now getting the stuff,” Anna moaned some more. “I can’t do this. You need to get her to stop.”

“Me? Why can’t you tell her? It was your idea.”

“I can’t do that, it’ll hurt her feelings,” Anna told her, aghast.

…..

When Elsa found Merida, she had commandeered a small part of the kitchen and was mixing some sort of liquid in a pot. The smell of the stuff was keeping the kitchen staff huddled at the far end.

“Anna told me of your celebration a little late,” Elsa called to her in Angolsi, to keep the gossiping staff out of the loop.

“ _Samhain,”_ Merida laughed, wiping her forehead. “It won’t be like it is in Dunbroch, but it will be fun.”

“What’s this I hear about severed heads? Anna was very…chatty….about the severed heads.”

“The old kings used to cut off the heads of their enemies and hang them from their horse’s manes, or the trees. Their spirits are looking for their lost heads. We hang vegetables on the doors to confuse them. By the time they figure out they’ve been tricked, it’s dawn and they have to leave for the otherworld.”

Elsa laughed, despite herself. Arendelle had many celebrations, but nothing so dramatic.

“How is _Samhain_ done back in Dunbroch, then?” she asked.

“We locked ourselves in Mam and Dad’s room and told stories. Dad had the best ones,” Merida replied, voice bittersweet. “Of course he would, he’d been in loads of battles. He knew exactly who was coming back and how they died. All the little ones drew the faces on the vegetables and hung them on all the doors. We stayed up all night and in the morning we’d light a bonfire and roast the vegetables.”

Truth be told, it _did_ sound like fun….

“Anna is rather hopeless when it comes to scary things,” she mused, more to herself than to Merida.

“Being scared stupid is part of the fun. When I was a little one we used to dare each other to look out the window and scream if we saw anything move. And the adults were off their faces on the _Leann-Ull,”_ she said, gesturing to the bubbling pot of …stuff.

Elsa leaned closer to the pot, and grimaced.

“It tastes better than it smells, I swear,” Merida told her, holding up her hands. “Needs a few more hours.”

…..

When she locked the door, she came back to find that Anna had taken two of her pillows and was perched on them, glaring at her. She was pressed close to Kristoff’s side, probably inappropriately, but there was no-one around and Elsa was hardly going to police her given the circumstances.

All of the palace staff had been sent home, for although Elsa couldn’t expect everyone in the town to drop everything to celebrate a foreign holiday at the last minute, to create the right atmosphere for just the four of them required an empty house. There were sentries on the portcullis and the staff would return in the morning.

Anna had, at the very least, deigned to paint what she thought was a frightening face on a pumpkin and hung it from the chamber door before it was locked. A cup of _Leann-Ull_ and two fruit cakes were left outside the door for wandering ancestors, a circle of cushions was made on the floor (celebrating on the floor was important, apparently) and a single candle was lighting the room, casting long shadows. The pitcher of _Leann-Ull_ and a high stack of currant buns sat beside the candle.

They were ready.

“I hate you all, I just want you to know that,” Anna grumbled.

“Drink this, you’ll feel better,” Merida told her, handing her a goblet as Kristoff made ‘D’aww’ noises and cuddled her.

“Ugh. Is that the stuff you were making in the kitchen? No thanks,” Anna muttered.

“It’s tradition. You won’t have much fun without it…”

“I’ll drink it,” Elsa said, rolling her eyes and taking the goblet.

The smell had been deceptive, although the alcohol content burned her throat and she coughed. Even with her eyes watering like crazy, she could taste the sweetness of the apples and the prickle of cinnamon.

“Who wants to go first then? You need to hold the candle,” Merida told them, holding out the candle.

“I’ll do it,” Kristoff offered, ignoring Anna’s angry look.

“Traitor,” she muttered.

 

…..

“...and now he’s got a thousand children, every year there’s more, and they just get bigger and _bigger!_ They say they can almost match their father in size, and he can eat a reindeer in one bite and spit out the antlers!”

Kristoff finished, put down the candle and drained his drink.

“That’s not scary,” Merida scoffed.

“You tell this story to Sven at night, don’t you?” Elsa deadpanned. “Even giant wolves can’t scale solid stone walls. We’re quite safe.”

“It’s scary when you’re on the mountain, that’s for sure,” Kristoff grumbled.

A dog barked in the courtyard, and Anna screamed.

…..

“…it was full of clothes!”

Merida and Kristoff looked at Elsa, confused. Anna cowered under a blanket.

“Girl’s clothes,” Elsa added.

They still looked confused.

“They belonged to his daughter! The one that died!” Elsa yelled, a little too loudly. (How many cups of that liquor had she had?)

“So?” Kristoff shrugged.

“So she was the one moving the…things….around!” Elsa spluttered, waving her hands around.

“Oh,” Merida said, nodding. She still looked confused.

“Good story,” said Kristoff, and he drained his goblet.

Anna sobbed quietly under her blanket.

…..

“…he couldn’t tell _which_ head was his, so he tried them all on. When he finally had the one that belonged to him, he had all these spare heads and he made them into a weapon. He tied them together with a…what’s the word for this thing again?”

Merida tapped the base of her neck and gestured wildly.

“Um…the spinal cord?” Elsa suggested, feeling more than a little queasy.

“Right, spy-nall coord,” she agreed. “He made a club as big as a man and swung it over his head in battle, crushing his enemy’s skulls like…thing that is easy to crush. Then he fed the bodies to his horse.”

“Horses don’t eat meat,” Kristoff scoffed, though he looked suspiciously pale.

“ _Bodh Dearg’s_ did. It was born on a dog and a horse, was half of each. He fed it his own blood so it would only listen to him. The spirits are very angry that they had no burial ground, on _Samhain_ they take bones from other graves to make bodies.”

Elsa shuddered, and drained her goblet. Her head felt very fuzzy.

Anna stuffed a currant bun into her mouth and burped loudly.

…..

“….but he can’t get you unless you say his name out loud. So don’t say his name,” Anna slurred, and leaned back with her arms folded.

“But…didn’t you say his name?” Merida asked.

“What? No I didn’t…”

“You did. You said Candlestick…”

“It’s Candlejack!” Anna corrected her, and realized her mistake with a start. “Oh, no…”

“It’s fine…”Elsa garbled, trying to put a comforting hand on Anna’s arm but missing and knocking over her empty goblet. “So you said Candlejack….it’s not real…”

“Now you said it!” Merida gasped, inching away from her.

“What? Candlejack? What?” Kristoff queried, rubbing his forehead and frowning.

“You’re all doomed,” Merida said darkly.

At that moment, the pumpkin that Anna had tied sloppily to the door came loose and crashed to the ground with a wooden crunch. They all screamed.

…..

“Look at this face,” Kristoff cooed. “It’s so squishy! How do you do that?”

He was holding Anna’s head in his arms and stroking it like a kitten. Anna laughed, seemingly barely aware of where she was. It was all highly inappropriate…

But Elsa couldn’t muster the energy to get them to stop. And Merida’s legs were thrown across her lap so she couldn’t move even if she wanted to.

She poured herself another goblet of that wonderful, wonderful liquor and poured one for Merida too, who accepted it with a dazed grunt.

…..

Daylight flooded the chamber and a sunbeam pierced through Elsa’s head like an arrow. Groaning, she tried to move, but found something was weighing her down. Her eyelids felt glued together, she opened them with difficulty.

The whole world was suddenly red and gold. She reached out her hands to push away what was in front of her face…

_Hair. It’s hair._

Specifically, it could only be Merida’s hair. Her eyes shot open wide and she craned her neck to see through the mass of curls. Sure enough, Merida’s tousled head was on her shoulder, the rest of her sprawled out across the bed, half on and half off of Elsa.

She mumbled in her sleep as Elsa gently pushed her away to sit up and take stock. They weren’t in the chamber they had celebrated in. She realized with a start that they were in Merida’s bedchamber. With that revelation, hazy memories trickled back into Elsa’s sleep-addled mind.

_Kristoff had fallen asleep under the window, and Anna cuddled up next to him, mumbling endearments quietly and giggling. Merida stood up suddenly and made to leave, and Elsa reached out a hand to stop her, even though she was lying on the floor._

_“Don’t go,” she groaned. “Iss dangerous out there.”_

_Merida snorted._

_“I’m not afraid of Candlejack,” she said with a wave._

_“Nooo, now you said his name!” Elsa groaned, and rose shakily to her feet._

She didn’t remember escorting Merida back to her chamber, except for snippets where they crashed into walls and laughed, and tried to shush each other even though the castle was empty.

Her vision was clearing properly now, and with a gulp she saw that Merida’s bodice had been taken down and her skirt was hiked up over her thighs. One stocking was missing, the other around her ankle. Elsa was similarly rumpled, her skirts and petticoats wrapped tightly around her knees, her collar undone.

_“There’s too many buttons,” Merida grumbled drowsily. “Why are there so many buttons?”_

_Her fingers fumbled clumsily over her bodice and Elsa openly stared, unable to stop herself._

_“Just rip it,” Elsa told her. “It’s easy.”_

_She dug her fingers into her own collar and popped it open with a satisfying release of pressure. Merida tried, but couldn’t seem to find the seam. Elsa laughed._

_“Hang on, I’ll help you…” she said, staggering over._

_Even dimly through the liquor haze, gripping the seams of Merida’s bodice in her hands, she knew she was making a mistake. One sharp pull and Merida’s pale breasts were **right in front of her,** barely concealed by a thin shift. Merida laughed softly, and Elsa’s eyes traced the movement of her chest. Her mouth watered. _

**No. No no no!**

With a strangled gasp, she threw herself off of the bed and out the door, fled to her chamber, clutching her torn collar as if it would restore her modesty. Her heart hammered so hard it physically hurt.

_She felt light-headed and swooned, and Merida may have either tried to catch her or just happened to be placed perfectly to be fallen on. All of a sudden she was in Elsa’s arms and it set her skin on fire. It was a heavenly burn, having been so cold for so long._

Feeling the pressure build up at the base of her pelvis with an intensity she had not felt before, Elsa collapsed on her bed. She barely felt her hands tearing her skirt away, reaching past the cloth to the straining flesh beneath. When her fingers found her hollow, they dove in and she muffled her scream with her pillow.

_One mouth found the other, and the one below opened to allow invasion. Elsa’s tongue plundered greedily; the taste of the liquor doubled over with Merida’s scent filled her senses. She felt the swell of Merida’s breasts heave against her own, and wanted more. Her hand strayed to Merida’s skirt and yanked it up, her fingers dove underneath the thick woollen stocking. She found smooth plumpness there and squeezed hard enough to bruise._

Dimly, she remembered watching Meena touch herself and her thumb sought out that curious little button that brought so much pleasure. Swiping against it, an electric sensation sent shivers through her.

_One stocking was torn off and flung across the room, and she pulled at the other, but found it more troublesome. She rose to remove it properly, and only then noticed that Merida was no longer conscious. She was peaceful in slumber, mouth slightly open, completely unaware of how ravaged she looked._

_Elsa groaned, and slumped beside her to join her in sleep._

The pressure built as she remembered how that lovely flesh had felt in her hands, how soft and pliant. Savagely she ground the button as hard as she could, and pressed the folds of her hollow until she peaked with a hot rush of fluid. Exhausted, she flopped into the mattress.

As though from very far away, she heard the portcullis creak open to let the staff back in. With a heavy, shaky sigh, she went to her bathroom to run a bath.

 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

All or Nothing

Chapter Thirteen

.....

Warning; there may be typos here, I’ve lost access to MS Word and though I’m usually an excellent speller and pretty good at spotting typos, there’s likely to be one or two (or more) that I missed.

Also, I’d like to re-iterate that you can follow this on my Tumblr account, which has an open ask if you feel the need to ask about canon/send me hate.

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/aornff

On with the show!

.....

_Mortified._

_Awkward._

_Ashamed._

Maudlin it may have been, but Elsa found that thinking up new words to describe how she felt about giving free reign to her hormones through drunkenness was a good way of keeping her mind off of the memory of how Merida’s bare skin had felt under her fingers...

_Stop that._

Ahem.

_Appalled._

_Humiliated._

_Ignonimious._

She was fairly certain that nobody suspected that anything was amiss. They had all eventually turned up in the dining hall to groan and blearily drink coffee to chase away their hangovers. When Merida sat down and winced, rubbing her backside and mumbling that she had bruises on her bruises, Elsa had buried her suddenly scarlet face in her napkin and faked a coughing fit.

_She doesn’t remember. Thank the Lord._

But in a way, wasn’t that worse? Didn’t that mean she had essentially taken advantage of a drunk, completely insensible girl?

_Despicable._

_Reprehensible._

_Heinous._

There had been a moment when she could have sworn that Merida kissed her back, but how could she be sure of that, drunk as she was? And kissed back or not, she hadn’t consented to be forcibly undressed, even if she had laughed about Elsa ripping her bodice open (could have been a surprised laugh, who knew?)

In between flagellating herself over her actions, she had found herself thoughtlessly bringing herself to orgasm at the memory, imagining that Merida had indeed responded, indeed had pressed her body fervently to Elsa’s to spur her on...

_The worst. I am just the worst._

.....

As the mortification slowly began to wear off and she kept her distance from Merida, she considered calling Meena back to the castle to at least dispel a few of these troublesome urges. The thought of it made her feel a little sick, but perhaps it would be a safer option.

However, Meena had her own plans.

Passing by the entrance to the North tower one afternoon, Elsa heard Merida’s queer up-and-down Dellian accent accompanied by a familiar melodic trill. A rush of cold dread filtered through Elsa’s being and she barely felt her feet carrying her up the tower steps.

“...it’s really rather charming, don’t you think?”

To Elsa’s horror, Meena was sprawled languidly across the ledge towards Merida, ostensibly showing her a necklace she was wearing but in reality trying to display as much of her bosom to her as possible. Her dress was shockingly low-cut even for her, it dipped towards her navel and threatened to expose her at a single movement.

“Yes, is very nice,” Merida answered pleasantly. If she noticed this blatant provocation, she didn’t show any sign.

“ _WHAT_ are you doing?”

Despite herself, Elsa winced. She hadn’t meant to shout. Merida was looking right at her with alarm, but Meena straightened and dipped into a low curtsy, somehow managing to expose both her cleavage and her shapely legs in the process.

“Oh, your highness,” she simpered. “Good afternoon. We were just speaking about you.”

“You _know_ you’re not supposed to be here,” Elsa hissed through her teeth.

“Oh, am I not? Please excuse me. I found myself wandering one day and I came across our noble visitor,” Meena said coquettishly, sitting back down next to Merida. “We’ve been chatting for quite some time.”

A sickening revelation occurred to Elsa when she saw the two girls side by side. Meena’s hair had, over time, become less structured and more chaotic, and her mannerisms had become looser and more spontaneous. Her posture had slackened from a held lasciviousness to a lazy, rolling grace. Even her voice had changed from a husky even tone to a singsong lilt. Elsa had liked the change, it had attracted her.

Now she realized that Meena had been directly imitating Merida.

_How long have they been meeting like this?_

The air around them stiffened with chill and Elsa drew herself up to her sternest countenance, though the only effect it had on Meena was to paint an impish half-smile on her face.

“Lady Meena,” she said, putting the full weight of her position into her words. “You will go to my antechamber and wait for me there. I would speak to you in private about this matter.”

“Very well,” Meena replied breezily and bounced away.

Elsa turned to Merida, wincing a little internally at how nervous she looked.

“How long have you and Lady Meena been meeting like this?” Elsa asked her, with what she hoped was a neutral tone.

“Two months maybe, don’t know for sure,” Merida answered. “She just come up here one day, I thought not to send her away. I was wrong to do this?”

“No, it’s not your doing,” Elsa sighed, massaging her temple. “Lady Meena has crossed a line, she knows this.”

“Bodice is too small, I think,” Merida offered. Elsa laughed, despite herself.

“Something like that. I’ll speak to her.”

She left Merida, hoping she’d reassured her somewhat, and prepared to challenge Meena without skewering her with an icicle. How _dare_ she!

“Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you carted off to the dungeons,” she hissed, throwing open the doors of the antechamber.

“Because that would be ridiculous? What grounds could you possibly explain? I don’t think speaking to someone is a crime,” Meena answered, infuriatingly smug.

“I’m the queen, I don’t have to give a reason. Crawling around the castle uninvited for two months would suffice.”

“Closer to three months, actually,” Meena said with a sultry stretch. “Poor dear, I don’t think telling time is her strong suit. She is a little dote, though. I can see why you like her so much.”

“ _This ends now!_ ” Elsa spoke through gritted teeth, to keep from shouting. “You do not see her, you do not speak to her, and you don’t talk about her. Or so help me...”

“Or what?” Meena said as the humour dropped from her face and she met Elsa’s eyes, _challenging_ her. “How did it even take you this long to find out? I know you noticed when I started acting like her. It was the first time you even looked at me properly! How long are you going to keep denying yourself?”

Suddenly frightened, Elsa’s words died in her mouth. Meena perched on the edge of a chair, toying with the dipping neckline of her dress.

“You think I did this to hurt you. If it hurts, that’s not my doing,” she said grimly. “Every whore knows lust, and love, and the difference between them. If you merely lusted after that girl, you’d have pounced on me the moment I copied her way of speaking.”

She leaned in then, fixed Elsa with a look that rooted her to the ground.

“You _LOVE_ her,” she said, deliberately drawing out the word ‘love.’ “Only love could wound a person the way you have been wounded. And the more you pretend you don’t, the deeper the wound becomes.”

She sat back then, as Elsa felt alternating waves of sadness and terror flush through her. Almost casually, Meena spoke again while looking at her own reflection and rearranging her curls.

“You know, I don’t think she’s opposed to the idea. She certainly seems to think two women together is quite normal. And she thinks very highly of you. It’s not as hopeless as you think.”

“You’ve talked to her for three months and you know what she thinks?” Elsa said hoarsely as the words returned to her. “How can you know anything about her? About me?”

“What I know is that you’ve been torturing yourself over this and it needs to stop,” Meena answered. “You should tell her how you feel. If she rejects you, then you’ll know and you can move on. A broken heart can be healed if you let it. And if she doesn’t, well...”

Meena moved past Elsa then to go to the door. Before she opened it, she called out once more, over her shoulder.

“I think I will not return. Tell her I said goodbye, won’t you?”

Then she was gone, and Elsa crumpled to the floor, stricken.

.....

_I don’t think she’s opposed to the idea._

The words echoed in Elsa’s mind. Any time there was a moment she couldn’t fill with work, or talk, or task, she heard Meena’s suggestion inch its way into her mindspace.

_I don’t think she’s opposed to the idea._

_She thinks very highly of you._

She was so deep in thought that the first two gentle knocks on her office door went unheeded. Only the third knock brought her out of her musing.

“Come in,” she called, and her heart did a giddy little jump as Merida entered the room.

Something was up. She looked on edge. She was holding a strip of linen with clearly Gaelic writing on it.

_Linen. Messages from Cava are always on hide._

“News from Dunbroch?” Elsa asked, beckoning her forward.

Merida sat, and handed her the linen. Her face was alarmingly white, her expression pinched.

“It’s from Lord MacGuffin,” she said quietly as Elsa scanned the writing. She could pick out one or two phrases by now, but she’d still need to put it through the book.

“Bad news?” Elsa asked.

“Not exactly,” Merida answered. “Warrick’s ships have pulled back on the Northeast coast. Lord MacGuffin wants to take a battalion out of Dunbroch.”

“That’s good...”

“They want to come here.”

_Oh._

“Oh,” Elsa said weakly.

“Not permanently, of course,” Merida assured her. “They want to consult with me on what they’ll do next. And I think the old man wants to check up on me, too.”

_No. Say no. They’ll try to take her back to Dunbroch. Then any chance you have is gone for good._

“I can host them on no man’s land,” Merida suggested. “They’ll be fine with some tents. I can get them to leave their weapons in the boat. They won’t like it, but...”

“Let’s not be silly. You can host them here,” Elsa said smoothly, ignoring the hammering of her heart and the thumping in her temples.

“What, really?” Merida sputtered, and she looked so pleased that Elsa couldn’t help but relish the sight.

“Yes, we’ve hosted other countries’ councils before. It’ll mean some paperwork, but I’ll leave that to you.”

“Yes, of course,” Merida nodded furiously, clearly relieved.

“Will your brothers be with this battalion, do you think?” Elsa asked, hoping to brighten her further and regretting it when Merida drooped a little.

“No, the boys are on the far North coast. They’ve had no contact with MacGuffin’s people,” she replied. “There’ll be a few faces I know, though. MacGuffin’s son will probably be in the battalion, he goes everywhere with his Dad.”

Elsa felt a prickling sensation at this casual mention. Macguffin had been one of Merida’s prospective suitors, she knew that much. Merida handed her the linen and plucked a hair to go with it. Elsa barely needed to translate the letter by now, she trusted Merida’s intentions completely.

The same couldn’t be said for these other Dunbroch natives, though she would offer them a temporary space in her kingdom for Merida’s sake.

_Lord, don’t make me regret this._

 

 

 

 

 


	14. Chapter Fourteen

 

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter Fifteen**

 

Apologies for how late this chapter was. I was experiencing a very rough patch in my non-writing life and although it's far from over, I can breathe a little easier now.

 

I have a bit of a selfish request to make, and feel free to ignore if you think it's inappropriate. If you would recommend this fic to anyone else, would you please consider giving me a spot on TV Trope's fanfic rec list for Brave or Frozen? It would really make me happy.

 

…..

 

Merida was restless in the days and then the hours leading up to the battalion's arrival. Elsa thought she might have been glad to see some familiar faces from home, but her demeanour suggested otherwise. She was quiet but agitated, couldn't sit still, couldn't eat, had trouble sleeping. Elsa caught sight of her more than once pacing the tower balcony in the middle of the night.

 

The longboat was spotted just after the break of dawn, cutting through the fog like a knife. Merida abandoned the balcony to wait for them at the pier. Elsa watched her from the window of her office, standing stock-still but nervously twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt.

 

At last, the boat thumped the edge of the pier and the largest man Elsa had ever seen jumped onto the planks and strode towards Merida with such ferocity that Elsa thought for one horrible moment that he meant to kill her. When he instead gathered the princess up in his arms and clutched her to his solid frame as though he wanted to hide her inside of him for safekeeping she breathed a sigh of intense relief, and released the build-up of ice she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

 

He was joined moments later by an equally solid young man that she assumed was his son, and Merida's former suitor. He hugged her too, more gently than his father had, and Elsa felt a ripple of unease rush through her.

 

Summoning her formidable dignity, she prepared to meet with them at the castle gates.

 

…..

 

The castle had played host to the citizens of many different lands, from the bookish silk-clad scholars of Dionhae to the loose jovial winter visitors of Corleesenten. However, the men of Dunbroch were of a breed Elsa had never encountered before, something she put down to their land's isolation from the rest of the world.

 

They were all large, imposing men, even the thinnest of them had an underlying coiled strength. They smiled with scars cutting through the lines of their mouths, with broken or missing teeth. Their voices to a man were deep and booming, their eyes scanning every corner for a possible enemy, their shoulders squared imposingly to dare anyone watching to take them on even as Merida introduced their leader to Elsa and translated his words for him, polite as they were.

 

All the same, despite herself, Elsa warmed to Lord MacGuffin. He had shed tears on seeing his fallen comrade's daughter safe and well, and he shed them again as he thanked her for keeping Merida safe. She had never seen a grown man cry before, and now she saw several of these intimidating warriors openly let tears trickle down their scarred faces.

 

They had brought tribute, as any good visitor to Arendelle would have, but Elsa demurred and told them she would only accept a tenth of what they had brought. She couldn't in good conscience take so much while their country was suffering so much unrest. Lord MacGuffin pledged his undying loyalty to her in graphic detail as Merida translated, with an occasional sardonic roll of her eyes.

 

“...and if there's ever a day when the Gods themselves have issue with you, he will lay their heads at your feet,” she finished, and MacGuffin nodded, holding up his enormous hands to emphasize.

 

“Well, I am glad to hear it,” Elsa replied, a little pale. “Should I ever make such a formidable enemy I would be glad to have you by my side.”

 

“ _Tá sí sásta ar chloisfidh é,”_ Merida echoed in Gaelic to MacGuffin. _“Má namhaid ufásach a dhéanamh sí tá áthas uirthi tusa aige muirneacha taobh léi.”_

 

Lord MacGuffin nodded sternly and made a strangling gesture with his hands. His son, standing just behind him, nodded more amiably. Elsa thanked them again and ushered them into the main banquet hall so they could eat and relax after their long journey. She left them to it, with instructions to the staff to look after them as honoured guests, and she went to inspect the gifts they had insisted she accept.

 

It was remarkable how generous they had been, even with just a tenth of what they had brought. Several barrels of enormous smoked fish the size of small sharks, wheels of bright yellow strong-scented cheese, several skeins of wool so soft and thick it made Arendelle's wool seem threadbare by comparison, and a trunk full of beautiful gold and silver jewellery. It spoke volumes for how Dunbroch had survived even with its people scattered and displaced; it was a country that was self-sufficient to the utmost degree. She had suspected this from what Merida had told her, and the gifts proved it.

 

…..

 

The castle staff had started off very reluctant to serve the Dunbroch battalion, who seemed very loud and intimidating to them. They had been flitting about at the doors trying to convince each other to serve in their stead. Merida had to repeatedly warn them not to throw scraps on the ground or hurl dishes at each other as they were used to doing at home.

 

But as the day turned to evening and then night, the staff warmed to these strange visitors. They thanked the servers for their plates and when one of the younger girls struggled with a heavy platter and nearly tripped, one of the warriors took it from her and helped her to her feet in one oddly graceful move. The servants were used to being ignored by those they served, as was the custom in the Delles. By the end of the night they were arguing over who got to go in.

 

The men trickled off to the guest dorms one by one until just Lord MacGuffin, his son and Merida were left at the table, talking quietly and seriously. Elsa watched them from the doorway of the adjoining study.

 

She realized now, seeing her with her countrymen, how restrained Merida had been all this time. She talked with her hands as they did, her voice dipped and rolled more than ever in her native tongue, she spoke louder even when she was being quiet. Her body language was looser, not quite relaxed but engaged and engaging. It shocked Elsa to think that she had been so tense after all this time.

 

After watching them for a while, Elsa felt uncomfortably like she was imposing on them somehow and went back to her office. After an hour, where she busied herself with paperwork and tried not to feel so _off_ about the situation, she heard a soft but familiar knocking pattern on her door.

 

“It's open, come on in,” she called, mentally shielding herself without quite understanding why.

 

Merida walked in and sunk wordlessly into the chair across from Elsa. She looked exhausted.

 

“I think your men might take half of my staff away with them when they leave,” Elsa joked. “They're proving rather popular.”

 

Merida cracked a wry smile, but didn't laugh.

 

“What's the news from home, or would you rather not tell me?” Elsa prodded gently.

 

“It's not bad, but it's not too good either,” Merida sighed. “All the people are scattered. Capital's empty, the Lords have gone to ground and they're supporting as many people as they can. All travel is stopped unless necessary, sea routes have been blocked until now. Warrick's lost a lot of support in Angols but he still has more men, and he's pulled back to fortify the capital. Everyone's at a standstill. And it's not safe for me to go home yet.”

 

_This is your home. You're happy here._

 

Elsa bit back that traitorous little thought and offered a sympathetic smile in its place.

 

“I've told you, you're welcome to stay here for as long as you need. How long do you really think Warrick can hold out?”

 

_Forever. Please._

 

“He's holding out as long as he can. He's convinced I'm still in Dunbroch somewhere. He's been sending out searches since I escaped. He's offered ransoms. MacGuffin told me he's had dogs brought over from Angols to track me down.”

 

Merida's voice shook a little as she talked about the dogs. Perhaps she hadn't understood how much he'd wanted to get her back until then.

 

“Well, the dogs won't be able to find you here,” Elsa told her. “Now, if he manages to train some whales we can worry.”

 

That dragged a soft chuckle out of her, and she looked a little less forlorn.

 

“MacGuffin said something like that,” she said.

 

“Great minds think alike,” Elsa shrugged. “He seems nice.”

 

“He was one of my Dad's best friends. Only went to war against each other four times.”

 

Elsa swallowed. “Only four? The mark of true friendship.”

 

“Well, that last time didn't count, it was just a skirmish,” Merida waved away. “He was just doing it because the other Lords were. Once I told them I wasn't marrying anyone they got over it right quick.”

 

Elsa felt an uncomfortable churning deep in her gut as she was reminded that one of Merida's former suitors was at that moment asleep in her castle.

 

“That younger fellow, I assume that's MacGuffin's son?” she prodded, as if she didn't know, as if he wasn't the image of his father as a younger man.

 

“Yes. Fionnchan MacGuffin,” Merida nodded.

 

“Your once betrothed,” Elsa prodded further, keeping her tone light, as though she were teasing a girl about her lover.

 

“We were never betrothed,” Merida laughed. “He was just the least awful option. You should have seen the other two.”

 

_No thank you._

 

“Least awful? How romantic,” Elsa drawled.

 

“He was no more interested in me than I was with him,” Merida shrugged. “And we were too young for all that anyway.”

 

But even hearing her speak, the gnawing in Elsa's gut intensified. They were both older now, and feelings changed, and after being separated from her home for so long a familiar face could prompt her to look again.

 

Merida had clearly not seen the way he looked at her, but Elsa had. Fionnchan MacGuffin had hung back behind his father, speaking only when spoken to, and maintaining a respectful distance from Merida, but his eyes had zeroed in on her at all times as if the rest of the world had faded away. His feelings were written so clearly that Elsa now wondered if she looked the same way, if that was how Meena had figured her out so easily.

 

Even long after Merida left the office, Elsa remained there, trying to quell her agitation.

 

Three days. Just three days, and then they would be gone, and Elsa could go back to figuring out what to do with herself.

 

… _.._

 

For three days, Elsa mostly made herself scarce, ostensibly to give Merida space to reconnect with her countrymen. Anna took over her diplomatic role with relish; she fit in well with them and they fell over themselves trying to impress her. Kristoff hovered in the doorways unhappily much as Elsa had done.

 

“They won't be here for long,” Elsa consoled him after finding him downing brandy in the kitchen.

 

“I saw that big one pick up a horse,” Kristoff moaned. “How am I supposed to make Anna think I'm manly after that?”

 

Elsa sighed. Masculinity was an oddly fragile thing.

 

“Anna doesn't love you because of your manliness,” she consoled, but then stopped because she wasn't quite sure what Anna saw in him. She'd never really asked.

 

Kristoff threw a gulp of brandy back and slumped over the table.

 

Elsa ordered a selection of Arendelle's prized exports to be loaded into the longboat, explaining away to her advisors that when Dunbroch was more stable they would make a valuable trade partner. She showed them the gifts and they agreed, but she neglected to tell them she had only accepted a tenth.

 

The last night finally arrived, and her uneasiness was starting to drain out of her.

 

_One more night. Just one more, and at dawn tomorrow they'll be gone._

 

It was past midnight, and Elsa was just putting away some files and preparing to go to bed when she caught a flicker of movement, a scarlet flutter out of the corner of her eye. Merida was in the tower. That wasn't unusual.

 

What was unusual was that someone was there with her.

 

Her veins felt like they were pumping acid as she left her office, crept up the stairs and crouched low at the entrance of the balcony, out of sight in the shadows but just close enough to see what was going on. They were talking, quietly, but in Gaelic so their volume wouldn't have made a difference either way. Fionnchan mumbled low and fast, clutching something in his giant fists. Merida responded with high tones, pleasantly, as to an old friend.

 

But then he leaned forward, and held out the object he'd been holding.

Merida's hand fluttered to her mouth, and even from where she stood Elsa could see the tears filling her eyes glimmer faintly in the moonlight.

 

It was a pendant, silver, on a thin braided chain, intricately carved in whorls and spirals. The stars shone through the gaps in the design. Exquisite.

 

The kind of gift you gave to someone you loved with all your heart.

 

He said something else, but Merida cut him off with a heaving sob and threw herself at him, wrapped her arms around his immense shoulders. He held her as close as his father had, and closer still. His eyes closed, and Elsa knew he was hoping never to open them again, for the moment to last forever.

 

The churning that had plagued her since the day she'd agreed to host the Dunbroch warriors finally stilled, replaced by a stone that settled there and dragged everything down with it.

 

…..

 

The night passed without sleep, and Elsa's despair became a cold rage, building inch by inch like a frozen lake surface. Merida had _lied_ to her.

 

Elsa had given her a safe home for a year and a half, had practically made her _family,_ and Merida had lied to her.

 

What now? Did she plan to marry this boy, move him into the castle now that she was the queen's closest friend? Maybe move his father in too, away from the unrest plaguing Dunbroch? Maybe move his entire battalion, and her brothers and eventually all of Dunbroch's citizens would be making their way to Arendelle and its generous queen. Or perhaps they were hoping for Elsa to bequeath some military strength to their honeymoon trip home to take Dunbroch back, and put through Merida's divorce from Warrick at the point of a blade.

 

Even as she let the fury rage in her mind, Elsa knew deep down she was being irrational. But she felt used, and foolish, and hurt.

 

Merida went to the pier to see the battalion off, and then went to the tower to watch the longboat fade back into the mist on the horizon. She was upbeat when she joined them later for dinner, and this just fuelled Elsa's anger more.

 

 _You took me for a fool,_ she screamed internally. _A damned sentimental fool!_

 

“You look cheerful,” Anna commented as Merida took her usual seat, across from Elsa.

 

“They put up the Dunbroch crest on the way out. It's been so long since I saw it I almost forgot what it looks like,” Merida laughed.

 

“Yes, well it won't be long until you see it again,” Elsa bit out.

 

Her tone took Merida by surprise, and Anna looked at her with concern.

 

“Are you okay? You look a bit...” she began.

 

“I'm fine,” Elsa cut her off. “I will be fine. I just don't like being taken for a fool.”

 

She pinned Merida with a glare as she spoke. A thin sheen of frost began crawling across the windows. Merida paled, glanced at Anna, then back at Elsa.

 

“Did something happen?” she asked, cautiously.

 

“You tell me,” Elsa snapped.

 

“Elsa, what the hell...?” Anna began, before Elsa held up a hand to silence her. The chill reached their water glasses, spiderweb-like cracks formed through the glass and the water trickled onto the tablecloth.

 

“I don't understand,” Merida said, and indeed she did look confused, not to mention hurt. Elsa almost felt like letting it go. Almost.

 

“I know that MacGuffin boy proposed to you last night,” she snapped. “And I know you were foolish enough to accept. I _don't_ know what you plan to do next, and frankly I don't care, but after living under _my_ roof at _my_ patronage I'd have thought you had the _decency_ not to lie to my face!”

 

Distantly she was aware that the ice was building in layers on the walls.

 

“I never lied to you,” Merida said, and _oh, she looked so innocent,_ Elsa wanted to believe her. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

 

“You're still lying! I saw you with him! I saw what he gave you!”

 

There was snow now, swirling around the room, but there was nothing but Elsa and Merida, across from each other. Everything else was fathoms away.

 

“Do you mean this?” Merida asked, and then the silver pendant was dangling in front of her, gathering snowflakes on its surface. Elsa wanted to rip it out of her hands and destroy it.

 

“How did you know he gave this to me? Were you watching us?”

 

A creeping dread began building as Elsa was suddenly aware that maybe, possibly, she had made a terrible mistake.

 

“You were watching us,” Merida confirmed.

 

Elsa didn't answer.

 

“This was my mother's,” Merida continued, in a tone utterly devoid of emotion. “My father gave it to her when he proposed, she never took it off. She was wearing it when she died.”

 

Of all the times that Elsa had felt at her lowest point, she had never felt the level of self-loathing, of pure disgust with herself that she did at that point in time.

 

“The Lords stormed Machblair's stronghold to give my parents a proper burial , but the pendant was missing. Fionnchan bribed every servant in the castle to get it back. He thought I needed to have it. It's all I have left of her.”

 

The snow, the frost melted away as Elsa's deep, burning shame manifested outwards, leaving the walls and carpets damp. The relative discomfort probably wasn't why Merida got up and left without another word.

 

“You know, you're my sister and I love you,” Anna growled, throwing down her soaking wet napkin. “But sometimes you're a real piece of work.”

 

Elsa couldn't agree more.

 


	15. Chapter 15

**All or Nothing**

 

 

 

She'd thought about it, of course, _agonized_ over it. A few times she'd gotten up from where she'd been trying and failing to bury herself in work to find Merida, throw herself at her feet and beg for forgiveness, but every time she'd made it as far as the door and stopped dead, unable to go any further.

 

Just because it was the right thing to do didn't make it _easy._

 

There was a sullen pall hanging over the castle. The servants were sulky and bored now that their interesting visitors had left. Elsa had been hiding away in her office since the... _incident_... at the table, taking all her meals there and inventing paperwork when there was none left to occupy herself with.

 

And Merida...

 

Elsa hadn't seen her at the tower, although she knew Lua was being fed and exercised. She had managed not to run into her at the dining table because mostly Merida hadn't been leaving her room to eat, and if she was haunting the halls again like she had at the start of her stay she chose to do it in the hours Elsa was asleep or working.

 

A full week had passed before anything happened.

 

That _anything_ was Anna, who flung open Elsa's office door with such fury the doorknob took a chunk out of the wall. Elsa, startled, almost flung a sheet of ice at her but managed to stop herself.

 

“Anna,” she sputtered. “What....?”

 

“You need to talk to her. Now.”

 

Elsa thought to feign ignorance for a moment, but Anna's expression was murderous. She's never seen her cheerful little sister so angry.

 

“I don't think it would do much good,” she mumbled instead, and winced at how mulish it sounded when spoken aloud.

 

“You _have to,”_ Anna hissed, stomping over to the table. “She won't listen to me. She's packing up her stuff, she says she's leaving tonight!”

 

The word _leaving_ hit Elsa like a fist. She blanched, searched for composure and couldn't find it through her growing panic.

 

“She can't leave,” she blurted out. “That's insane, she has nowhere to go!”

 

“That's what I said,” Anna told her, throwing up her arms. “I told you, she won't listen to me! She said she's 'clearly outstayed her welcome.'

 

Elsa groaned, rubbed her temples to keep her shame at bay.

 

“I didn't mean it, I don't know what came over me.”

 

_Yes, you do. You know exactly what came over you._

 

“Don't tell me, tell her! And do it quick!” Anna yelled, grabbing Elsa by the wrists and hauling her out of her chair.

 

Elsa fought against her sister's efforts to shove her out of the door, as much as she didn't want Merida to leave the idea of even talking to her again made her feel panicky. Anna half-pushed, half-dragged her across the office floor as Elsa dug in her heels and tried to pull herself loose.

 

“Anna, no, I can't...”

 

“You _can_ and you _will...”_

 

“Just...ow! Let me go...!”

 

“You get up there and you make this better!”

 

Anna proved too strong in the end, Elsa took a moment to wonder how that had happened as Anna shoved her bodily into the hall, slammed the door and locked it.

 

“Don't come back 'til you've fixed it!” she called from inside.

 

Well. What choice did she have?

 

Her heartbeat thrummed sluggishly as she dragged herself through the corridors to Merida's room. Thankfully there were no servants around (probably all downing brandy in the kitchens) to ask her if she was okay. She might have turned around had she encountered one.

 

She stood outside Merida's door for a solid three minutes before she knocked. When there was no answer, she opened it softly and entered.

 

Merida's back was to her; she didn't hear her come inside. A small burlap sack, half-full, was squatting on the bed like a toad. She was holding up two dresses and threw one down with an annoyed huff, stuffed the other one into the sack as if it had insulted her somehow.

 

“What are you doing?” Elsa asked, quietly but sharply.

 

Truthfully, she would have liked Merida to be angry with her when she turned around, to spit at her that it was none of her damned business. Or cold silence, a refusal to acknowledge that she was there at all.

 

Instead, she looked right at Elsa, tense and nervous.

 

“I'm leaving,” she answered after a moment.

 

“Why?” Elsa blurted out, far more harshly than she meant to. “Where could you possibly go?”

 

“I'll figure something out,” Merida mumbled, stuffing a pair of flat shoes into the sack. “I've stayed here for far too long. I've taken advantage of your hospitality, and I'm sorry for that. I won't trouble you much longer.”

 

A flare of anger bubbled up inside of Elsa, directed more at herself than at Merida.

 

“You can't. I won't allow it,” she growled.

 

“You can't stop me,” Merida shot back.

 

_Yes I can. I have to. Somehow._

 

“Everything you own is property of the crown,” she sputtered. “You're not permitted to remove it from Arendelle.”

 

It looked like Merida might lash out for a moment, her face crumpled with sudden fury, and just as suddenly it was gone.

 

“Saves me the trouble of packing then,” she muttered, tossing the sack off the bed. She stalked past Elsa and went for the door....

 

….only for Elsa to shoot a spout of ice across the handles, fusing them shut. It had happened instinctually, she barely felt herself do it, just knew she had to do something, _anything_ to stop her. She stood with her hand outstretched, wanting to say something but unable to form words.

 

“What? Do you need the clothes I'm wearing, too?” Merida turned on her in a rage.

 

Elsa stared at her, speech stuck in her throat and refused to move.

 

“You don't want me here,” Merida continued. “I asked you to make me a servant and you wouldn't. You could have sent me to the refugee town and you didn't. What do you _want from me?”_

 

Elsa couldn't stop it.

 

It fell out of her mouth, she couldn't catch it.

 

“I want you.”

 

The words hung in the air, and now Merida's anger was obscured by confusion. If she could, Elsa would have clawed the words back, buried them inside of her so they would never surface again.

 

“What's that supposed to mean?” Merida asked her, shrugging helplessly.

 

“I don't want you to leave me,” Elsa whispered, because now that the words were out they wouldn't stop falling. “I want you to stay with me. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry....”

 

The first sob burst out of her and it brought her to her knees, it burned and ached but at the same time it was blessed relief. She couldn't even see Merida anymore, the tears were coming so fast and every time she tried to wipe them away there were more.

 

“You took my heart,” she sputtered between heaving breathes. “The first time I saw you, you took my heart and you've had it ever since. If you leave me, you'll take my heart with you.”

 

Distantly, she felt herself being gently pulled forward, her hands tugged away from her face and her tears wiped away. Merida's face swam back into focus through her bleary vision. Astonishingly, she didn't look angry anymore.

 

“That's what all this has been about?” she asked. “You've got....a _thing_ for me? Is that right?”

 

A year and a half of feverish longing reduced to a _thing._ Even through her tears, Elsa had to laugh. She nodded, tremulously.

 

Merida made an odd sound under her breath, awkwardly pushed back her hair.

 

“Are...are you sure about that?” she asked. “I mean....have you _seen_ you?”

 

“All I see is you,” Elsa mumbled.

 

Merida made the sound again. Then, she took a deep breath and seemed to decide on something. Elsa steeled herself. Rejection would be hard, but it couldn't be worse than....

 

“All right then,” Merida shrugged.

 

….what?

 

“What?” Elsa blurted out.

 

“We'll give it a go,” Merida told her, as if it was just that easy.

 

Elsa gaped, her mouth once again opened and shut with no sound. This was better than she could have hoped for.

 

“I don't think I feel as strongly as you do,” Merida continued, and now a rosy blush suffused her cheeks and swallowed up her freckles. “But I like you, I'm willing to try it out.”

 

“Yes,” Elsa said at last. “Yes, please.”

 

She smiled, though a few stray tears trickled through, and she could honestly say she had never been so happy in her life. Merida laughed.

 

“If it makes you smile like that, it has to be a good thing,” she said.

 

It was risky, and could shatter this thing that had been decided between them, but when Elsa took Merida's face in her hands and pulled her forward to bring their mouths together, she didn't pull away. They kissed, and it was tear-stained and salty but it was mutual and so sweet Elsa never wanted it to end.

 

Suddenly exhausted, Elsa slumped forward, and Merida caught her to cradle her against her chest.

 

“I'd best unpack then,” Merida grumbled, and despite herself Elsa laughed.

 

…..

 

The first weeks of their _relationship_ (oh, what a thing to have! Even the word made Elsa grin like a halfwit) were comprised of stolen kisses, fleeting touches and crippling shyness. They had hurried moments in Elsa's office where Elsa would pull Merida onto her lap and press her mouth to hers, and trace along her throat to her collarbone. Merida didn't reciprocate quite, but let Elsa do as she pleased.

They had moments at the dining table where one would gently tap the other's foot with hers discreetly, to show she was thinking of her. When they passed each other in the hall they would risk a quick stroke of the other's hand.

 

Merida accepted it all with good humour, though now with her feelings out in the open Elsa's mind was plagued with a new worry; that her own feelings were so much stronger, and she could never quite know what Merida was thinking. She seemed to enjoy the affection, and it was quite enough to keep Elsa satisfied, but she was always wary of pushing her too far too fast.

 

And the thought of being discovered weighed on her too, she's had to warn Merida that it was technically against the law in Arendelle for two women to be together in this manner.

 

“So?” Merida had shrugged, playing casually with the end of Elsa's braid as she sat on her lap. “I'm not from Arendelle, and you're the queen.”

 

“It's not that simple,” Elsa groaned, running her fingers along Merida's spine.

 

“It should be. Whose business is it what we do with each other?”

 

“There are those in the castle that would make it their business,” Elsa mused. “We should figure something out, if you spend too much time in here the servants will gossip.”

 

Then it occurred to her; the sally port. Nobody had taken any notice of Meena while she used it.

 

“There's a passage in the castle almost nobody knows about,” she told Merida. “It leads right to my chambers.”

 

“Why would they build something like that in the castle?” Merida asked, astonishingly innocent.

 

“I think it was built to smuggle in the old king's mistresses,” Elsa answered. “That's why it's called a sally port, some of the kings were very fond of prostitutes.”

 

“Is that what I am then? A 'sally'?” Merida laughed, and Elsa gave her an affectionate little squeeze.

 

“No, of course not,” Elsa said. “But it is very discreet, Meena used it for months and nobody...”

 

She stopped, but of course she had said far too much. Merida frowned down at her, crossed her arms.

 

“Meena? The women with half a dress?”

 

Elsa gulped and nodded.

 

“What was she doing in the sally port, then? If it leads right to your chambers.”

 

“She was providing me with a ...service,” Elsa mumbled. Her cheeks flamed and she knew it served to make her look guilty.

 

“What service?” Merida asked sharply.

 

“You tell me, you were the one talking to her for three months,” Elsa shot back.

 

“She was talking to me, I was just being polite,” Merida growled. “But she came here to see you, didn't she?”

 

“We didn't do anything,” Elsa finally bit out. “ I couldn't. Not for lack of trying on her part....”

 

“Stop, I don't want to hear any more,” said Merida, getting up and making for the office door.

 

Elsa trotted after her, caught her just before she reached the door. She couldn't let her leave angry.

 

“Meena was a mistake,” she admitted. “Please don't hold it against me.”

 

Merida pouted for a moment, then nodded. She gave Elsa a quick, fleeting kiss, and then was gone.

 

Elsa stayed in her office and mused on it for a little while, and a pleased satisfaction filled her. She could not tell what Merida was thinking, truly, if she was just going along with all of this to make Elsa happy and because perhaps she found the kissing and touching pleasant.

 

But she had gotten angry at the thought of Elsa with someone else, and that in and of itself was promising.

 


	16. Chapter 16

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter Sixteen**

 

…..

 

“How bad is it?”

 

Elsa really didn't need to ask, she could tell exactly how bad it was. The water had soaked the carpet through and was now trickling out into the hall. Everything in the room they were standing in front of was dripping, from the bed to the wardrobe to the low couch. It _smelled_ wet.

 

But she thought she should ask anyway, for the sake of authenticity.

 

“It's completely destroyed, your highness,” the maid told her with an air of regret. “Everything, I'm afraid.”

 

“Is there any chance we can get this cleaned up before she comes back?” Elsa asked.

 

“I....I don't think so, your highness. It'll take two days at least to air out the fixtures....”

 

Elsa feigned a groan and rubbed her temples.

 

“She's going to be furious,” she said, while also wondering if she was laying it on too thick. “She keeps everything she owns in there.”

 

This was true, but when they made the plan (between hurried kisses stolen in Elsa's office) Merida had been warned to move anything she desperately wanted to keep somewhere else. Apparently this had not included any of her clothes, which was just as well for making their little ruse look realistic.

 

“Well, maybe we can do _something_ before she gets back, and we should hurry because...”

 

“What's going on?”

 

Elsa and the maid turned sharply, guiltily. Merida was making her way down the hall towards them, blithely smiling at them.

 

“Ah...” Elsa began.

 

“My lady, I'm afraid I have some bad news...” the maid said.

 

Merida's face dropped.

 

“What did I do now?” she asked, frowning.

 

“Oh, it's nothing you did...” Elsa said.

 

“There's been a...” the maid trailed off, unable to find the word.

 

“...an _incident,”_ Elsa continued for her. “Well, an accident really...”

 

Merida strolled past her and peered into her room, and her horrified look was so convincing that Elsa wondered if she'd forgotten their plan.

 

“One of the pipes above this room burst,” Elsa told her. “The water....well, it got everywhere. We're going to move you to one of the empty rooms downstairs...”

 

“All my stuff...” Merida mumbled.

 

“Yes, I'm afraid almost everything was damaged...we'll send out for replacements...again, I'm very sorry...”

 

The maid was standing to one side, scarlet, twisting her hands in her apron. She winced as Merida walked right in on the sodden carpet, ruining her shoes, and started ranting angrily in Gaelic.

 

“ _...In ainm t-ádh! Cád é an seafóid anois? Búiochas le...”_

 

“You should go,” Elsa leaned in to whisper to the maid. “Get the head steward, have him look over the dressmaker's logs...”

 

“ _...niór aon sibh agam, agus mo chuid éadaí uile? Úfasach!”_

 

...have the bed made in the last room on the west wing, and light a fire in there. I'll talk to her.”

 

The maid gratefully nodded and scurried away. Elsa stepped into the ruins of the bedroom, trying to ignore the water soaking through her shoes, to where Merida was muttering darkly to herself.

 

“You do remember we planned it this way, don't you?” she asked.

 

“Yes,” Merida answered, suddenly switching to a much brighter demeanour. “Was that a bit much?”

 

“Very convincing,” Elsa sighed with relief. “You even had me fooled.”

 

It was an easy task, to freeze the water in the pipe and then release it suddenly causing the burst, but she was almost surprised that it had worked so well. Daring, now that they were alone, she pulled Merida's hair to the side and pressed a kiss to her neck, relishing her shiver and smile in response.

 

“My feet are soaked,” Merida mumbled. “Can we get out of here?”

 

“Of course.”

 

Elsa lead her to her new chamber. In front of the staff, who clearly felt bad for her, Merida was sullen and frowning. As soon as the door was closed, her smile was back on.

 

“It looks bigger,” she mused, poking at the bed in the middle of the room.

 

“I assure you it's about the same size,” Elsa told her. “But more importantly...”

 

The wall was covered with slats, and Elsa knocked on one nondescript set of lines to the left of the fireplace, opening the latch and revealing the entrance to the sally port.

 

“...it has this.”

 

Merida peered into the dank little passageway. There was a set of circular stone steps just about visible in the dim light.

 

“Don't forget to bring a lamp,” Elsa mumbled.

 

“So I won't be spending much time here at night, then?” Merida laughed.

 

She said it so flippantly that Elsa was taken aback. She felt the blush rise furiously up her neck and spread across her cheeks. Merida was so busy squinting into the sally port that she didn't notice.

 

“Well, I must be off,” she muttered, trying to diffuse the blush. “The steward will be by to see about replacing your clothes so...”

 

“I'll see you later then,” Merida said. She looked up and the smile she gave Elsa could only be described as _saucy._

 

On the way to her office the maid stopped her and asked if she was feeling unwell as her colour was so high.

 

…..

 

When they were together, everything was so shockingly _easy_ it almost frightened Elsa.

 

Since Merida moved to the room with the sally port, every night she slipped into Elsa's bedroom for an hour or two, and they had progressed from light kissing and stroking to something altogether more intimate. They kissed so much and so deeply that Elsa felt an ache in her jaw for hours afterwards and a rawness on her lips. Merida had to push Elsa's head towards her collarbone away from her neck, because Elsa got so carried away with her mouth on Merida's skin that she sucked deep purple bruises into her flesh that were impossible to cover up.

 

During the day, happy as she was, Elsa was distracted. Being the queen was never harder, work was never more tedious, even meals were a chore to sit through. She lived for those stolen moments, every hour that ticked by was an hour closer to when they could be together again.

 

And yet...

 

And yet she still wished she knew what Merida was thinking. She seemed happy enough, and eager at times, but it was possible she just enjoyed what they did together. She'd not grown up with the same hesitations that Elsa had, who could say she wouldn't have been just as happy to let Anna be so intimate with her?

 

But if she thought about it too hard, or worse still _voiced_ these concerns, she ran the risk of losing Merida altogether and even considering this filled her with terror. No, best to keep it to herself. For the time being, at least.

 

Who would want to think of such things anyway, when being together was so sweet? When Merida didn't slap Elsa's hand away when it pushed at her skirt, or traced the edge of her bloomers, or slipped under the band of her stocking to stroke the skin underneath, to press her fingerprints into the flesh so she'd know where she'd been? In the best moments Merida would moan and push back against her hands, freeing herself up for more access.

 

The first time Merida dared to touch her back, Elsa scarcely noticed. Her left hand was full of those delightfully soft curls and her right was tracing a circle across her bare thigh. Her mouth was on Merida's, massaging her tongue with her own. She didn't realize until she felt Merida's fingers gently stroking the back of her knee.

 

She startled and shied away, crawling back towards the edge of the bed. Merida sat up, and Elsa noted with a flush that her clothes were so utterly askew that anyone walking in right then would have known exactly what they were doing.

 

“What? What is it?” Merida grumbled, fixing her bodice in place.

 

“Nothing, I just....you startled me, that's all.”

 

“You don't want me to touch you?” Merida asked. Her nose wrinkled with confusion.

 

“It's not that...” Elsa began, but didn't know how to continue.

 

Merida groaned and stretched across the bed on her stomach. Elsa noted dimly that at some point she'd lost her stockings. Her bare legs swung back and forth in the air, Elsa tracked the movements.

 

“Talk to me, then,” she drawled lazily. “Tell me what you want.”

 

_How can I tell you when I don't know myself?_

 

“I'm not very good at this,” Elsa mumbled, settling against the bedpost. “I've never done this before.”

 

“Do you think I have?”

 

It would have made sense, Merida seemed much more comfortable than Elsa with all of this, but she hadn't wanted to think about it.

 

“Well, have you?” Elsa asked.

 

Merida frowned at her, only half-serious.

 

“No,” she said with a chuckle. “Closest I ever got was this game we used to play when we were little. The boys chasing the girls, said the first one you landed a kiss on was the one you got to marry. Some of the girls chased the other girls too. They chased me a lot, but I was always faster. So I don't think that counts.”

 

Her gaze darkened then, for a moment.

 

“And my wedding night, but that doesn't count either,” she mumbled.

 

“I'm sorry,” Elsa said, feeling awful for bringing it up.

 

Merida shrugged. “Not your doing,” she said.

 

“There was someone once,” Elsa began, wanting desperately to find some common ground. “A housemaid, when I was a girl.”

 

“You had a fling with a housemaid?” Merida grinned, surprised.

 

“Not a fling by anyone's standards,” Elsa told her. “I was ten. She was very....careless with her clothing. She knew I was watching her, she did it on purpose.”

 

“That's not right,” Merida cut in. “Where were the other children?”

 

“No other children, just me. I lived most of my life in one room. I didn't see many people. Anna had separate nurses, governesses, maids, everything.”

 

Merida was staring at her gravely, such a serious look did not sit right on her face.

 

“There was a governess too, I was quite infatuated with her,” Elsa continued. “I got to touch her once. I stroked her hand. She put a stop to that, then. That's it for my romantic life, I'm afraid.”

 

Merida didn't say anything, but she sat up and pulled Elsa into her arms. They lay across the bed, Elsa's head pillowed on Merida's stomach as she rubbed soothing circles on her back. For once, Elsa let her own hands go limp and let herself be touched.

 

…..

 

An understanding was reached, though an unspoken one. Merida did not touch Elsa unless Elsa brought Merida's hands to her skin herself, while Elsa was free to let her hands wander as long as Merida didn't protest. They continued their liaisons happily until they hit another bump.

 

It was quite by accident, as far as Elsa was concerned, or at least she wasn't fully aware of what she was doing. She was so swept up in touch and taste that she didn't notice anything strange until suddenly Merida froze underneath her. She went from warm and pliant to rigid as a block of wood in less than a second.

 

Elsa pulled away, breathing heavily. Merida's face was white, her eyes wide and terrified. Elsa had never seen her like this.

 

What could have... _oh!_

 

She realized with a start that at some point her hand had wandered and now was holding Merida's left breast. She removed it quickly as though it had burned her.

 

“I'm sorry...I didn't...sorry....”

 

She couldn't even be sure that Merida heard her. It was clear her mind was somewhere far away, reliving something desperately awful. Elsa dimly recalled how Merida had told her in plain but blunt detail exactly how she'd drugged the man she married to get away from him, and how he hadn't made it a pleasant experience for her.

 

“We should stop,” Elsa mumbled, pulling away. Merida merely nodded, and pulled her clothes more firmly around herself.

 

Elsa walked her to the sally port, didn't even attempt to kiss her goodnight. She flopped across the bed with an uncomfortable groan. Once upon a time she'd thought that things would be easy once she'd confessed, but clearly they both had a lot of work to do.

 


	17. Chapter 17

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter Seventeen**

 

 **A** pologies to anyone who thinks I'm neglecting this fic; please worry not, this fic will be finished by me come hell or high water. I have the ending in mind clearly and it's a bit of a ways off just yet. This just happens to be a very busy time in my life and I'm working on freeing up the time to write more often.

 

…..

 

They should have talked about it. That would be the sensible thing to do.

 

But Elsa was clumsy with words outside of her royal duties, and although Merida was more straightforward (blunt, one might say) she was reluctant to bring it up at all. She was back in Elsa's room and in Elsa's embrace the very next night as though nothing had happened.

 

Elsa kept the incident in the back of her mind and made sure her hands weren't wandering as freely as they had been. It was difficult, things got heated as they always did and Elsa would break away before it got out of hand. Merida was visibly annoyed but said nothing.

 

She took to touching herself into a frenzy in the morning in the hopes of dampening down her lust in the evenings. Satisfying as the climaxes were, it didn't work nearly as well as she hoped. It got to the point where she looked forward to and dreaded their liaisons in equal measure.

 

Finally, almost two weeks to the night later, when Elsa's fingers ghosted along Merida's ribcage she moved, attempting to manouvor her breast into Elsa's grasp again. Elsa quailed and shied away, and Merida sat up with an irritated huff.

 

“You should just go for it,” she muttered.

 

Elsa saw through her bravado easily enough. She feigned carelessness but her face was white again and her hands trembled slightly. They needed to talk about it, even clumsily.

 

“I won't,” she answered with a sigh. “If you're not happy...”

 

“I'm happy,” Merida insisted. “I just....remembered something. It's not a problem, I just have to get over it...”

 

“I will not touch you in a way that brings you distress,” Elsa ground out. “I would rather keep my hands to myself forever than do such a thing.”

 

“That's a bit drastic,” Merida said with a grimace.

 

“What do you take me for, a _man?”_

 

She blurted it out without thinking, and at Merida's suddenly baffled expression nervous giggles bubbled to the surface. Merida laughed with her, and the tension drained out of the room gradually.

 

“I'm just happy to have you here,” Elsa sighed. “I'm happy to remain somewhat chaste until you can trust me not to take liberties.”

 

Merida's smiled and looked away. Elsa's heart thumped painfully; no words were said, they hung in the air unspoken.

 

_I may never trust you._

 

… _.._

 

Merida stayed away the next night, but not because of anything that had passed between them. She suddenly came down with a low-grade fever and cough and was advised to stay in bed. It was curious, Elsa thought, Merida was just about the healthiest person she knew.

 

Three days passed, then four, and the fever abated but the cough stubbornly remained. She appeared at meals only to pick at her food and stifle her coughing with her napkin. Elsa passed her water and Merida waved away her concern.

 

“It's just a cough,” she hissed irritably when Elsa frowned at her.

 

“It's not going away. I'm going to send up some honeyed wine to you tonight,” Elsa retorted.

 

She sent honeyed wine for three nights, but it didn't seem to do any good. She was coughing just as much on the fourth day, maybe even more. Anna was talking about the wedding trousseau she'd finally gotten around to ordering, and out of politeness Merida was making a valiant effort to cough quietly into her napkin.

 

“I'm stuck between gold and silver,” Anna enthused. “I think gold looks better with my complexion and I was thinking green for the church and the reception and gold looks really good with green, but you know Mother wore silver so it's like tradition....and Kristoff looks good with silver, right Kristoff?”

 

“Yes, dear,” Kristoff agreed quickly, as was his custom when anything regarding the wedding came up.

 

“So I could probably do silver _and_ gold, but that's kind of osten....ostintay....ostena....kinda show-offy, and we're meant to set a good example for the people, but then I thought maybe we're supposed to go all out because the people like a good.... show....”

 

She trailed off as Merida's coughing could not be ignored any longer. She was still burying her mouth in her napkin, but her eyes were streaming and her face was blotchy and red. She was hunched forward, trying and failing to suck in breath through the coughing.

 

“Here, drink something,” Anna insisted, pushing over a cup of water.

 

Merida pulled the napkin away from her mouth to drink but another coughing fit seized her before she could even pick it up. Dark droplets of blood spattered across the surface of the table and just before she dropped the napkin Elsa caught a glimpse of its crumpled depths. It was black with blood.

 

“Kristoff,” Elsa warned him to readiness just in time as Merida pitched forward; he caught her just before she hit the ground in a dead faint.

 

“Anna, send for the doctor,” Elsa ordered. “Kristoff, pick her up.”

 

On the surface, Elsa was the very picture of calm as she lead Kristoff to Merida's bedchamber. She avoided looking directly at her to maintain this calm. But every painful fit of blood-spattered coughing followed by a struggle to gulp in air tugged at her very soul. She waved Kristoff away after he'd deposited Merida on the bed and did what she could to ease her breathing. She turned her on her side, unlaced her bodice, rubbed her back and tried to clear her airways.

 

When the doctor arrived, he took one look at her and pulled a glass apparatus and a bottle of laudanum from his bag. He shooed Elsa out of the room as he doused the glass with the laudanum and pressed it over Merida's face.

 

Elsa lingered outside the bedchamber, settled in for a long wait.

 

….

 

The doctor emerged after about two hours. By now Anna had joined Elsa in hovering outside Merida's chamber.

 

“She's got pertussis,” the doctor told them gravely.

 

“Per-wha?” Anna sputtered

 

“ _Whooping cough?”_ Elsa asked incredulously. “How is that even possible?”

 

“I can only assume the vaccine didn't take,” the doctor answered. “A foreigner's immune system may not react to things the way we do in Arendelle.”

 

_Oh...._

 

“The vaccine,” Elsa muttered, feeling the blood drain from her face. “She was never vaccinated.”

 

All refugees over the age of five were vaccinated against whooping cough, amongst other things, without exception. But that was in the refugee district, and those entering Arendelle were inspected upon entry. Merida had not gone through the same process.

 

The doctor sighed deeply.

 

“Then she's at risk for smallpox too, and scarletina. I won't be able to administer those until she's recovered,” he said grimly. “The pertussis will take three to five weeks to clear under isolation, and she can be given doses of laudanum to reduce the swelling and relieve the pain. I've pre-measured the doses, no more than two in one day. After that I'm afraid we just have to wait and let her chase out the infection herself.”

 

“I understand,” Elsa said numbly. “Thank you, doctor.”

 

_How could I let this happen?_

 

She had assumed the doctor gave her the vaccines while she was recovering, and had not asked. She hadn't even thought of it. Pertussis was so rare they almost never heard of it. And who could tell how Merida's body would react to this foreign disease?

 

…..

 

A young maid came in tears to Elsa's office, bringing with her a sorry tale. Her youngest sister, a babe in arms, had been taken away by the cough in the last month.

 

“I waited until she was buried,” she sobbed. “But my family needs the money, and I thought it safe to return. I boiled my clothes, highness, I thought the sickness was gone with her. I didn't mean for milady to get sick!”

 

“It's not your fault,” Elsa assured her. “I am truly sorry for your loss.”

 

She increased all of the maid's wages by ten percent that day; perhaps if that maid had been able to afford one more day off Merida would not have gotten sick in the first place.

 

Even from her office, she could hear Merida coughing. She had re-broken a rib due to her furious coughing fits and the nurse that stopped by to dose her up with laudanum bound her torso with boiled linen, making her even more miserable in recovery. Only two nurses were permitted to treat her, dressed in boiled white linen and with their mouths covered. The doctor had insisted on isolating her from the rest of the castle.

 

But by the fifth night, Elsa couldn't stand it any longer. She waited at the sally port until she heard the nurse depart and snuck into the room to be with her.

 

Seeing her after so long was joyful, but it hurt all the same to see her in so much pain. Her eyes were almost swollen shut, red and shiny, and her cheeks were flooded scarlet from broken blood vessels. Her mouth was raw-looking, and she had lost a frightening amount of weight.

 

Elsa softly slid onto the bed beside her, feeling the heat radiating off of her like a furnace. She was damp with sweat. She opened her mouth to speak but wheezed out another coughing fit instead.

 

“Don't try to speak,” Elsa whispered to her.

 

Merida closed her eyes with relief. With difficulty she pulled herself forward to lean her cheek against Elsa's thigh.

 

“I've missed you,” Elsa whispered again.

 

Merida's chest strained with the effort of pulling air into her inflamed lungs. The laudanum was keeping the worst of the inflammation under control, but it could only do so much. Elsa pondered this for a moment.

 

_I could ease her pain. I should..._

 

...but it would involve putting her hands on her chest.

 

_I shouldn't. We never talked about this properly...._

 

But how could she sit there with the means to make her recovery easier and not use it? What kind of person would do that?

 

Merida did start violently when Elsa reached for the closure of her nightgown, but Elsa wanted to think it was more to do with how sore she was than anything else.

 

“Ssh,” she whispered in what she hoped was a soothing manner. “I want to help you feel better.”

 

Merida stilled. Elsa pulled the neckline of her nightgown down as far as she dared, to just above the line of her breastbone. Filtering a light chill into the palms of her hands, she laid them on Merida's chest and pumped the chill through her skin. In an instant, Merida's breathing eased and her colour improved.

 

Elsa drew the bedcovers over them both and suffused the room with an icy atmosphere. She settled in for the night, resolving to spend every night with her until she was better. If Merida wasn't sleeping with ease, why should Elsa?

 

Merida mumbled something, her voice strained from ill-use. Elsa leaned in closer to hear, but it was Gaelic.

 

“ _Ní theastaoínn mé bás anseo. Tá mé ag dul abhaile.”_

 

She couldn't make sense of it, but she recognized that last word.

 

_Abhaile._

 

Home.

 

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

 

Apologies for how late this chapter has come, real life is giving me a few swift kicks at the moment , but this fic will be finished come hell or high water.

 

…..

 

Recovery from the pertussis was an achingly slow process. After the initial cough had finally subsided, Merida was still confined to bed rest for two weeks until she was deemed no longer infectious, and a further three weeks until her broken rib healed. She was so irritable and sulky during this time that even Anna found it hard to be around her.

 

Elsa, still feeling the hard pang of guilt that she had overlooked getting Merida vaccinated, visited as often as she could. She painted on her most cheerful face, suppressing a wince when she saw just how much weight Merida had lost in convalescence. But she was still able to adopt her sharp tone when she caught her walking around the room one night.

 

“Back in bed, now,” she commanded in her most 'queenly' voice.

 

Merida groaned, but complied. Elsa didn't miss the little tremble in her arms as she lowered herself back under the sheets.

 

“It's just for a little while longer,” she cajoled, sprawling out beside her over the coverlet. “The doctor will be back tomorrow, and you're much stronger now...”

 

“Strong?” Merida laughed hoarsely. “A stiff wind could knock me over. I've no muscle left.”

 

The kitchen staff had been sending up multiple plates of dishes supposedly perfect for getting invalids back on their feet (for all their initial misgivings, they had grown fond of the “little red ghost”) and she had eaten everything, even if half the ingredients were Dellian delicacies that she normally hated. They'd even gotten her to eat half a box of chocolates, though she complained the whole way through and was dramatically sick afterwards.

 

It had all done precisely nothing.

 

“I'll set you doing drills with the guards as soon as you're well enough, if you want,” Elsa offered. “But for now, stay in bed. As your queen, I command you.”

 

“You're not my queen,” Merida fired back amiably.

 

“Then, as your....um,” Elsa stammered. What _were_ they to each other, exactly?

 

“...as your paramour...” she began again.

 

“Pah-ruh-moore? Wassat?” Merida asked.

 

Lover wasn't right, they hadn't gotten that far yet. Betrothed was all wrong, mistress seemed a bit off, admirer suggested it was a one-way situation...

 

“...as your _sweetheart_ I command you,” Elsa finished, though she felt a hot blush climbing up her face.

 

“Is that what it's called here?” Merida asked with a low yawn, slumping under the covers.

 

“We don't call it anything here,” Elsa mumbled, fiddling with the cover of the book she'd brought with her. “It's not talked about.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Our God forbids it,” Elsa told her, hoping she'd drop it but knowing she wouldn't. “It's a mortal sin.”

 

Merida rolled her eyes. “That's stupid. Why does your God care what you do with other women?”

 

“I honestly don't know,” Elsa answered truthfully. It had never made sense to her, even as a young girl.

 

“It's not stopping anyone else,” Merida muttered.

 

_Anyone else?What?_

 

“What?”

 

“All the other women don't seem to worry about it,” Merida shrugged.

 

Elsa turned to stare down at her.

 

“What other women?” she asked incredulously.

 

“Couple of the maids,” Merida said breezily. “And that girl who brings in the cloth. The shoemaker's daughter and her friend...”

 

“I'm not sure I should be hearing this,” Elsa gasped.

 

“Are men not allowed do it either? Because there's loads of them at it too...”

 

“Arendelle is a hotbed of sin,” Elsa mumbled, slumping down the headboard of the bed.

 

Merida laughed so hard at her she was clutching her rib in pain, but at least it was nice to see her enjoying herself.

 

…..

 

Two nights later, Elsa put down the book she'd been reading aloud to her because Merida had been unusually subdued and was clearly not paying attention to the story.

 

“What's on your mind?” Elsa gently probed.

 

“Nothing,” Merida muttered. “Keep going, I was listening.”

 

“It's against the law to lie to the queen,” Elsa retorted.

 

“You're not my queen.”

 

“So you were lying then?”

 

Merida pouted, annoyed at being caught out. Then the look faded into something altogether more serious, and Elsa's concern was peaked.

 

“How likely is it that I might have died from that whooping cough?” Merida asked her bluntly.

 

Elsa swallowed, hard. She hadn't been expecting that.

 

“It's not that likely,” she told her. “You're young and strong, and you had the best doctor in the country....those that die of pertussis are usually the very young or very old, or they're already sick.”

 

“But they don't get it, because of that thing you said....the needle thing...”

 

“Vaccines? Yes, everyone gets them,” Elsa said. “You need two more, for scarlet fever and measles. When you're stronger.”

 

“The doctor told me how they work. How did they think of such a thing?”

 

“I'm not sure,” Elsa answered. “Vaccines weren't invented here, they were discovered a few decades ago by a Piscadellian scientist....”

 

“In Dunbroch they would have stuffed me full of herbs and hoped for the best,” Merida sighed. “It's not changed a bit in five hundred years.”

 

“Well, medical advances can be a bit out of reach....” Elsa offered. “We were very lucky you knew what that rash Anna had was...”

 

“It's not just medicine,” Merida retorted. “Everything here is different...you know for the first few weeks I was terrified to touch anything? I thought I'd break some of your furniture just by _looking_ at it.”

 

Elsa chuckled fondly and kissed her forehead, which Merida somewhat grudgingly permitted.

 

“It's because we kept everyone out for so long,” she continued. “It's about time that stopped. When I go home, it'll be different. I'll see to it.”

 

Elsa nodded and picked up her book again, because the mere mention of Merida 'going home' sent an icy rush up and down her spine. Merida settled down next to her, close enough to feel the heat radiating off of her body. She didn't seem to notice that the temperature in the room had suddenly dropped.

 

…..

 

The next morning, Elsa lingered in the aviary tower. It seemed emptier without Merida up there constantly, and although the staff and Elsa herself were tending to Lua, the falcon seemed put out that she hadn't seen her mistress in a while.

 

Elsa hadn't thought it possible for a bird to sulk.

 

But as soon as Merida had been strong enough to hold a pen, she'd scribbled off a letter to Maudie to let her know that she'd been ill but was getting better. Maudie had most likely been in a fit of panic in the meantime.

 

From the tower, Elsa gazed off into the horizon as far as she could. Dunbroch was there, she knew, hidden by fog in a way that was almost (and entirely possible to be) magic. She tried to imagine how Merida had felt in those first few weeks in Arendelle, surrounded by all these strange objects, unable to understand the language, with her homeland just out of view. In her shoes, Elsa might have frozen the entire nation in a panic.

 

A little speck in the sky drew closer and let out a shriek of greeting. Lua landed deftly on the ledge, cocked her head at Elsa and, surmising that she wasn't Merida, flapped haughtily and paced on the spot, hissing. Elsa threw her a hunk of raw chicken and took the letter of reply from her leg.

 

It was in Gaelic, of course. There were words here and there that Elsa recognized.

 

 _Abhaile..._ home _..._

 

 _Tinneas_...sickness...

 

 _Buchaillí_...boys...

 

Towards the end of the letter were a few scribbles that resembled words, but clearly not Maudie's doing. With a start Elsa realized that Merida's brothers were now writing to her too, or at least trying to.

 

The writing was smudged. Little boys had messy hands. And this was a new development...

 

Before she even realized she was doing it, Elsa was in the cloisters making her way to the memory book. She hadn't looked at it for quite some time; she hadn't needed to. Carefully, with the blade of a letter opener, she scraped some of the debris from the page onto the book.

 

Probably, it would yield nothing.

 

And yet, the little specks of dirt spread across the page and drew her in...

 

The atmosphere felt heavier on Cava, even as a spectre Elsa felt it sink down on her like a blanket. The sharp scent of the sea filled her and stung her eyes, and although it was cold it was a different kind of chill to the kind she produced with her own hands.

 

Inside this humble little cottage, a plump woman with a kindly face was poking at a pot over the fire. At the table, three boys were pushing food around on their plates. Well, two of them were. One of them was just staring at the plate with a deep scowl marring the baby fat of his face.

 

It almost hurt to see them. They were Merida's brothers, their features were a little thicker but they were unmistakable. They were tall for their age (she knew them to be eight years old now, ten years younger than their sister) with the last vestiges of childhood plumpness rapidly disappearing.

 

“Don't just look at it, boys,” Maudie said tiredly in Gaelic. “Eat up.”

 

“It's horrible,” two of the boys said in unison. The third continued scowling at his plate.

 

“Boys, I'm in no mood today,” Maudie snapped. “Tearlach's going to be back soon and if you don't finish your plate you can explain to him why not.”

 

The two boys sulkily started shovelling the food into their mouths. At least, up until their brother picked up his plate and hurled it at the wall.

 

“HUBERT!” Maudie sputtered, red-faced and incredulous. “What in the name of...”

 

“What's happened to her?” the boy ( _Hubert)_ shouted.

 

“To who?” Maudie shouted back. “Look at the mess, Tearlach's going to be...”

 

“What's happened to my sister?” he growled. “Why aren't you telling us?”

 

“Nothing's happened to her, as far as we know,” Maudie answered, a little calmer though still visibly furious. “She's probably fine.”

 

“Then why isn't she sending any letters? Why did she stop?”

 

At this, the two boys who had been silent pinned Maudie with a horrified look, as though it hadn't occurred to them that anything might have happened to Merida.

 

Maudie sank down at the table and put her head in her hands. At that moment, a mountain of a man strode through the door, took one look at the scene in front of him and gestured towards the door. Kicking his stool over as he left, Hubert stomped outside. Elsa followed, and so did the large man.

 

“What was all that about?” For such a large man, he had a soft voice.

 

“Something's happened,” Hubert mumbled, a little cowed in the man's presence. “She wouldn't just stop writing.”

 

“I made a promise to you. Remember?”

 

Hubert mumbled under his breath.

 

“I promised that if we know anything, we will tell you. Have we ever broken that promise?”

 

“No,” he muttered.

 

“We know as much as you do right now,” the man continued. “If Warrick had somehow found her and taken her captive again, we would have heard about it. If she had died, we would have been sent word of it from the place she is in now. Most likely we are not hearing from her because of something else.”

 

Hubert kicked at the ground irritably, but even so the rageful look on his face was starting to relax and fade. The man picked up a large bucket and tossed it to him.

 

“Don't come back until it's at least half full,” he said, and ducked back inside the cottage.

 

Hubert opened his mouth to argue, but then seemed to think the better of it and went off to do whatever he was meant to do with that bucket.

 

With a snap, Elsa was out of the memory and back in the cloister.

 

She was conflicted, horribly so. On the one hand, the letter was Merida's, and she needed to hand it over. On the other hand, she'd just recovered from a serious illness and didn't need any extra strain.

 

And there was the little niggling fear that seeing how much she was missed by her brothers would prompt her to try to leave Arendelle again.

 

_She can't. Not now. It's far too dangerous._

 

Warrick was still in control of much of Dunbroch, and the boys were clearly in good hands, and as long as they heard from her regularly there was nothing to worry about.

 

There was ample reason to keep her in Arendelle. For the time being, at least.

 


	19. Chapter 19

 

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter Nineteen**

 

The once-a-month update is probably frustrating to anyone following this story, and believe me it's frustrating to write this once a month too. I'm going to try and be faster for the following weeks.

 

Note: Explicit content.

 

…..

 

By the time Merida had fully recovered enough to be outside again, the first snows were beginning to fall. She seemed anxious to get out of the palace, but Elsa couldn't blame her. Captivity, even for her own good, suited her about as well as any wild animal.

 

She had only been off bed rest for two days when Merida insisted they take a trip up the North mountain to Elsa's ice palace, but for whatever reason refused to tell Elsa why. When Elsa suggested bringing Anna and Kristoff, Merida shook her head vehemently.

 

“Just us,” she insisted.

 

Elsa's heart did a giddy little skip at the idea that she wanted them to be alone. The more pragmatic side of her told her she just didn't want to be slowed down by anyone else, but it was nice to think of, all the same.

 

Merida wouldn't even hear of the journey being delayed by a single day. The morning they were due to leave, she was pacing in front of the door, itching to get gone. Someone had given her a pocketwatch while she recovered, and she checked it constantly while waiting for Elsa, scrunching her face in irritation.

 

When they finally got going, Merida half-leapt up the mountain, at all times twenty steps or more ahead of Elsa.

 

“Don't strain yourself! You've only just recovered,” Elsa called to her.

 

“I'm fine!” Merida called back, kicking up a cloud of snow in her path. “Come on, or we won't be there before nightfall!”

 

It was a bit ridiculous to be worried at barely past noon, but Elsa humoured her. Indeed, by the time they were at the door of the ice palace, the sun was just starting to set. Merida was frowning at her pocketwatch by the time Elsa caught up with her.

 

“What does the big hand mean again?”she grumbled.

 

“It counts the minutes,” Elsa answered, winded and clutching her side.

 

Merida rolled her eyes and grumbled something in Gaelic before throwing open the door and marching inside as though she owned the place. Laughing under her breath, Elsa followed.

 

She stopped to look around at the walls and the furnishings; she'd half-expected them to have melted at least a little. But the palace was just as she'd left it, solid and sparkling as ever. It was a testament to how stable she was feeling these days.

 

Just as she'd expected, Merida had made her way to the highest reachable point on the palace and was sitting on the windowledge, legs dangling in the breeze. The mist-covered peaks of Dunbroch's mountains were just about visible in the distance, but Merida was looking to the east, and checking her pocketwatch.

 

“This is the highest point, isn't it?” she asked Elsa as she sat on the safe side of the windowledge.

 

“Can't get any higher than this without losing air or getting blown away by the wind,” Elsa replied. “Do you want to tell me why you dragged us up here?”

 

“Fine, it's almost time anyway.”

 

She put away the watch and scooted a little closer to Elsa.

 

“When I was a child,” she began. “We had a visitor in the castle from some far away place. His ship ran aground near the coast and we took him in for a while. He was one of those....with all the books...and maps....”

 

“An explorer?” Elsa offered.

 

“Right, an explorer. He looked different to us, we'd never seen anyone like him before. He learned Gaelic in a few weeks! He told us his name, but we could never pronounce it, we used to call him _fear foghlamtha...._ the learned man.”

 

With a start, Elsa realized this was likely the man she had seen when she had found Merida's hair in the dining room. The man from Dionhae or Myohen.

 

“He let me look through all his old books, and there was this one story...”

 

Feeling a little sick, Elsa smiled and nodded as Merida told her the story of Lua, of how she'd run out to see her, fallen out of the tree afterwards and broken her leg, dragged herself home to find her father was sending out a search party. This was something Merida had wanted to share with Elsa, and Elsa had ruined it by snooping.

 

But there was no sense in telling her that. It would only upset her.

 

“So that's why you named your hawk Lua?” she asked, as though she didn't know.

 

“Not just that reason,” Merida shrugged. “Anyway, tonight's the night she comes back around here. I kept watch for her every year since I was ten years old.”

 

“Why didn't you tell me this on the way here?”

 

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

 

It was a touching gesture, even spoiled as it was by Elsa's interference. Overwhelmed, Elsa pressed against her from behind, enveloping her, burying her face in her hair. Merida held her hands and pressed back.

 

They stayed like that for Lord only knows how long, until Merida pulled out of the embrace.

 

“There she is!”

 

Lua, the spectre, had been magnificent as a shadow in someone's recollections, but to see her in person was truly incredible. Elsa's jaw dropped.

 

From below, she could have been mistaken for a comet or a shooting star, but close as they were, Elsa could clearly see a woman's shape in the flames. Her hair streamed out behind her, her wings lazily drifting, setting the clouds ablaze as she passed them. Little tendrils of fire broke away from her form, floated on the wind and vanished, leaving silvery trails of smoke.

 

Merida shouted and waved, prompting Elsa to furtively take hold of her skirt in case she knocked herself clean off of the ledge. The figure in the flames spun on her axis, drifted a little closer. In the brightness of her form, the shadow of her face betrayed her little smile, an acknowledgement that she had seen them.

 

Once upon a time, as a lonely little girl stuck in a single room away from everyone, she had wondered why she had been singled out, burdened with magic. But she realized now that magic was everywhere, and in the whole wide world her powers really meant very little. It should have been a depressing thought, but on the contrary, Elsa found it strangely uplifting.

 

Lua dissappeared into the clouds a few moments later. Merida climbed down from her perch with a happy sigh.

 

“That was really something, wasn't it...ah!”

 

She was cut off mid sentence when Elsa pulled her into her arms, held her close, buried her face in her shoulder.

 

“Thank you,” Elsa sobbed.

 

…..

 

Elsa set up the beds as she had before while Merida cooked dinner. They exchanged more tales from their respective childhoods, free to be louder away from the palace.

 

“...I swear he had most of his army, and every dog in Dunbroch, ready to go combing the forest, and I just stumbled out while he was talking to the troops, dragging my banged-up leg behind me...and I went 'Hi, Dad,' and that was that. Search party off.”

 

“How angry was he?” Elsa asked.

 

“Oh, furious. Not because I was sneaking out or anything, he had to feed all the men he dragged out before he sent them home. He had me peeling potatoes for a month. It was worth it.”

 

Tired but happy, Elsa settled into bed. But Merida looked at her bed, and Elsa could tell by the expression on her face she was wrestling with some decision. Then she did something Elsa hadn't expected, that left her gobsmacked and unable to move.

 

In one fluid motion, she pulled her nightgown over her head and tossed it casually to one side. She stood there, bare-skinned from head to toe, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, while Elsa's synapses crackled and misfired.

 

Even the practicing with Meena had not prepared her for this. It was the kind of woman's shape she had dreamed of since her feverish, hormone-riddled adolescence; full-breasted, sweeping curves, an expanse of creamy soft skin. Elsa's mouth was dry, her tongue clumsily trying to find words.

 

Merida shivered, wrapped her arms around her breasts.

 

“It's bloody freezing,” she laughed. “Can I come in or not?”

 

“Yes,” Elsa croaked, lifting her blanket.

 

They had been close before, but this was an even greater leap forward. Merida kissed her, and Elsa found herself responding naturally, as she had before. She kept her hands rooted firmly to her side, until Merida took up one hand and placed it on her breast.

 

“Do what you want to do,” she whispered in Elsa's ear, before pressing a kiss to the thumping vein at her throat.

 

Elsa flipped them over. It was dark, she couldn't see much at all, but instinctively she sought out the places she wanted to find, first with her hands, then with her mouth. One set of fingers stroked the velvety skin around Merida's nipple while her lips found the other and gently sucked. A wanton heat was building at the core of her.

 

Her mouth trailed lower, ghosted carefully over the ribcage she knew was still bruised, skimmed over the slight pouch of the stomach, and though she didn't really intend to go lower, she found once she started she couldn't stop. She ended up burying her face in the molten core of her.

 

Merida didn't protest, just opened her legs for better access.

 

It was intoxicating. Elsa's mind shut off completely and she was a creature lost to her senses. Her tongue dove in deep between the folds as her fingers worked that odd little button, her lips alternately sucked and kissed at the spreading wetness. When the climax came, she felt it ripple through her own body and, mysteriously, followed it with an answering release. She hadn't even needed to be touched.

 

Emerging from under the blanket, she saw that Merida was gasping for air as though she'd been drowning. Both of them were damp, and seeing no reason to cling to modesty now, Elsa shucked off her own nightgown and tossed it away.

 

“That was something,” Merida said breathlessly, a moment later.

 

“Yes,” Elsa agreed. She didn't feel quite capable of proper words just yet.

 

“You want me to...do that to you?”

 

Even the thought of it made Elsa squirm pleasantly, but she shook her head.

 

“Not right now,” she murmured. “Just...”

 

She trailed off, and in lieu of words she laid her head on Merida's chest. Merida stroked her head as she fell asleep, and she would have been happy to never wake again.

 

…..

 

Merida did indeed repay the favour a few nights later. Elsa wondered if that brush with death suddenly made her throw all caution to the wind, and even if that was the case she couldn't help but be grateful.

 

Elsa was considerably more shy when it came to her body, but she was easily distracted, and Merida's fingers were nimble. There was enviable talent there, in that she could induce a powerful climax with just two fingers followed immediately by several little tremors. Elsa felt quite clumsy by comparison, spent a lot of their nights with her face pressed against Merida's folds trying to match the pleasure she'd been given. Merida didn't complain, so she was probably doing well.

 

Waiting for night to fall was torture, and they were somewhat drunk on each other, so naturally they became reckless. Elsa found herself signing important documents of state hunched over on her desk with her skirt around her waist and her bloomers around her ankles being thoroughly wrung out by Merida's skilled hands. Merida tagged along on granary inspections, fully expecting to duck behind a sack of barley so that Elsa could sample the goods.

 

And really, most people did _knock_ before entering her office.

 

Afterwards, scarlet with the thought of it, Elsa would ponder exactly what Anna had seen when she walked in on them.

 

It was rather tame, actually. They hadn't gotten far. Merida was on the desk, yes, but she was (mostly) clothed. Except for a bit of rumpling in the bodice where Elsa's hands had been digging around, you might have thought she'd missed a button or something. And yes, her hands were halfway up the slit in Elsa's skirt, but she could have been fixing it, like a good friend would.

 

As for the fact that Elsa's tongue was making itself very much at home in Merida's mouth...well, you couldn't have told that just from seeing it from the doorway. Not really.

 

And you couldn't blame them for not hearing Anna let herself in. She could be quiet when she wanted to be. Who knows how long she'd been standing there, watching them go at it.

 

“Oh my God...”

 

Once those words fell out of Anna's mouth, they sprang away from each other, blushing furiously (guiltily) and Elsa tried to find the words to deny whatever it was Anna thought they were doing, but Anna had fled, slamming the door behind her.

 

Elsa dropped into her chair, groaning.

 

“Is this bad?” Merida asked gently, fixing her bodice.

 

“Quite,” Elsa grumbled. “I didn't really want her to find out like _that.”_

 

“Should I...talk to her?”

 

“No, no. I'm her big sister, I'll do it.”

 

Merida gave her a chaste kiss, and departed. Elsa prepared to go to Anna, to explain everything...

 

...but really, those documents she needed to approve were _very important_ and _couldn't be ignored much longer._

 

And by complete coincidence, by the time she'd finished it was past midnight.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

 

 

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter Twenty**

 

… **..**

 

If you'd given Elsa a choice, she could have spent the rest of her life buried between Merida's legs, inhaling her scent, surrounded by her soft skin. As it was she only got to spend most nights there, and it was nowhere near enough to satiate her. Sex tended to drive every problem she ever had, big or small, from her mind.

 

So naturally she didn't hear Merida's question and responded with a muffled groan.

 

Merida's hands pushed her head away and she re-emerged from under her skirt, red-faced and irritable, aching with lust.

 

“What?”

 

“You never told me what Anna said,” Merida prodded. “I haven't seen her since, what did she say?”

 

“Oh, that,” Elsa muttered. “I haven't talked to her yet.”

 

She tried to get back under the skirt, but Merida sharply pushed her away, sitting up. She looked furious (though it was hard to take her anger seriously with her bodice around her waist like that.)

 

“You haven't talked to her? It's been a week!”

 

“I know,” Elsa huffed. “I've been busy...”

 

“You haven't been that busy,” Merida snapped.

 

She began pulling her undergarments back on, to Elsa's dismay.

 

“Oh, don't,” she pleaded. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to let it go on this long....I just don't know how to even bring it up with her....”

 

Merida paused in her buttoning (thank goodness) and softened a little.

 

“I know it's hard,” she said. “But it'll just get harder the longer you let it go on. You have to talk to her some time.”

 

“I know,” Elsa groaned, as the full reality of the hole she'd dug herself into hit her.

 

She'd actively been avoiding Anna since she'd caught them in the office, taking on more and more work she didn't even need to do, taking her meals in the office, emerging late only to make love with Merida and sleep. Even the thought of bringing up the subject with Anna made her cringe in horror, desperate to fill her mind with something else, anything else.

 

“I went years without talking to her,” she said hopelessly to the ceiling, flopping down across the bed. “And even when we did start talking again, we never talked about anything like this.”

 

“How did she tell you about Kristoff, then?” Merida asked.

 

“She didn't,” Elsa replied. “He just turned up the day after we unfroze everything and declared that he was in love with Anna...and it's nothing like what we have, he's not even allowed hold her hand in public before they get married.”

 

Merida snorted, and Elsa looked up. To her distress, she found that Merida was fully dressed and getting up to leave. She attempted to pull her back down to the bed, but her hands were gently slapped away.

 

“Why are you leaving? We were having fun...” Elsa moaned.

 

“I'm just distracting you,” Merida told her. “No more fun until you get this sorted.”

 

“That's not necessary,” Elsa grumbled. “I'll do it tomorrow, I promise.”

 

“Good,” Merida trilled pleasantly, opening the door of the sally port. “Then we can have more fun tomorrow night.”

 

With that, she was gone, leaving Elsa unbearably frustrated. Huffing, she grabbed the decanter of wine off of the nightstand; it was the only way she'd get some sleep.

 

…..

 

Elsa was tempted to call for Anna at the break of dawn. She'd tossed and turned all night, dreading this conversation but also desperate to get it over with. She held off until close to noon, pacing the floor, unable to settle her mind enough to do any actual work.

 

When the door of her office was knocked, she jumped.

 

“Come in,” she ordered, trying and failing to keep the quiver out of her voice.

 

At least when Anna did enter the room, she didn't look angry, or upset. Her face was strangely blank for someone who was normally so expressive. Elsa tried to smile reassuringly but it dropped when Anna didn't respond.

 

Elsa poured them both some tea, to give her nervous fingers something to do.

 

“Thank you for coming,” she began, passing the teacup to her sister. “I'm sorry, I've been putting this off for a while...”

 

Anna's face didn't change, she sipped her tea and waited for Elsa to keep talking. It was unnerving, not at all like her cheerful little sister.

 

“We need to discuss what you saw in the office the other day...” Elsa began.

 

“Yes. Exactly _what did I see_ in the office the other day, Elsa?” Anna cut in.

 

Elsa's mouth opened and closed at Anna's sharp tone, but no words came out.

 

“I can tell you what I thought I saw,” Anna continued. “I thought I saw my older sister, the _queen_ of my _country,_ kissing a woman. And not just any woman, a refugee who happens to be a _teenager...”_

 

“She's eighteen,” Elsa cut in, more than a little shocked.

 

“ _Just_ turned eighteen,” Anna retorted. “What are you playing at? From where I was standing, it didn't look like the first time you'd been doing _that...._ how long has this been going on?”

 

“Shortly after the Dunbroch natives left,” Elsa told her. “We've been lovers since then.”

 

“Oh my God,” Anna groaned. “Do you realize how much trouble you'd be in if someone else had walked in instead of me?”

 

“Most people know how to knock,” Elsa bit back.

 

“Yes, it's _my_ fault for not knocking...how rude _I_ was to interrupt you committing abomination!”

 

Elsa started, for these words sounded bizarre coming out of her little sister's mouth. She had never been particularly devout...in fact, she'd been scolded so many times for fidgeting in church that she used to make herself sick to avoid Sunday mass.

 

“Stop,” she said, holding her temple to keep her temper in. “I know that's not you speaking...tell me what _you_ think.”

 

“Fine,” Anna said, softening. “You know that's what they'd say if they found out...nobody's ever come back from that kind of disgrace....I'm scared for you!”

 

Elsa chuckled, a little grimly. There was the sister she knew...

 

“You know, in Merida's culture this kind of thing isn't even considered strange?” she said.

 

“Merida's culture is backwards,” Anna retorted.

 

“Don't say that,” Elsa snapped. “And don't _ever_ let her hear you say that!”

 

“As if I would,” Anna scoffed. “But while we're on the subject...how long do you think this is even going to last? She's going to go home eventually, and you'll have risked everything for nothing!”

 

_That's not true. It's not safe there. This is her home._

 

“What do you want from me?” Elsa asked, shrugging helplessly. “That I should put everything I feel on hold because she _might_ leave some day? The edict I signed said I could never marry a man, should I be happy to stay untouched by anyone forever?”

 

“There's no _might,_ Elsa...she's going to go back to Dunbroch as soon as it's safe. You know that.”

 

“For all we know, Dunbroch will never be safe,” Elsa replied.

 

“So what, you're just going to keep her here as your dirty little secret? And she's happy with that?”

 

“Anna, I don't know what's going to happen in the future,” Elsa sighed. “All I know is that I've never been happier.”

 

“I'd like to be happy for you, I really would,” Anna sighed with her. “But I can see it all going horribly wrong...I just don't want you to get hurt.”

 

“If it does, I'll deal with it,” Elsa promised. “You don't have to worry.”

 

“I'm going to worry anyway,” Anna replied quietly.

 

…..

 

Elsa still felt emotionally drained by the talk with Anna by the time she made it to bed. She thought she'd be too tired to want to do anything sexual, but as soon as Merida made an appearance she had a sudden burst of energy.

 

Once they had finished and were lying half-on and off the sheets, Merida asked how it had gone.

 

“I don't like being scolded by my younger sister,” Elsa grumbled into the skin of Merida's stomach. “But she accepted it in the end.”

 

“Not like she had much of a choice,” Merida laughed. Elsa enjoyed the tremor rocking her aching head gently.

 

“How would your family have taken it?” Elsa asked.

 

“They'd probably have been delighted,” Merida told her. “You're a proper lady....my mother would have loved you. And an alliance with Arendelle would have been better than anything the other suitors could offer.”

 

That cheered her considerably. The people of Arendelle had accepted her powers...how hard would it really be to convince them that two women betrothed to each other was a good thing, especially if it brought a strong alliance with it? Dunbroch was unstable, but it could be strong again...

 

...and if it never became stable, it just meant that Merida would have to stay in Arendelle, with Elsa. Maybe eventually they could bring her brothers over, if that's what she needed to be happy...but she was happy, with Elsa.

 

Merida fell asleep as Elsa's mind mulled over and over. She had to consider her future some time, she couldn't keep putting it off. As the clock in the tower chimed for midnight, Merida rolled over in her sleep, away from Elsa, and Elsa's eyes followed her.

 

Her hair fell to the side, exposing her naked back to Elsa's sight. The last time Elsa had seen it, she'd been catching a stolen glance through a keyhole. Merida wasn't bashful when it came to her body, in fact Elsa envied how natural she was in a state of undress, but she was cagey about her back. Her voluminous hair acted as a veil most of the time, but even when they were having sex she tended to keep her back out of Elsa's hands.

 

It was strange to have such a full, clear view of the damage that had been done. The room was lit up by moonlight, dragging the scarring and the unmarked flesh into high contrast. Before she knew it, Elsa was brushing her fingers against the scars, feeling how deep they went, running her thumb against the healthy skin to feel the difference.

 

She had been touching the scars for some time, not even really knowing why, when Merida's breathing started coming out ragged. She mumbled something in her sleep, could have been Gaelic or gibberish. Elsa pulled back a little but did not stop.

 

She was sure the scars didn't hurt anymore; the whip had dug valleys into her skin but the nerves were dead and the flesh long healed. Merida's body was a map of scars, little and big, and it was fascinating for Elsa who didn't have so much as a childhood scrape. No scars bothered her so much as the ones on her back.

 

Elsa pressed a little more firmly at the base of Merida's spine, at the lowest scar. Merida flinched, and cried out. Shaking, Elsa pulled away and covered her with a sheet. She turned on her side, away from Merida.

 

Dunbroch was full of nothing but bad memories. Who was to say that Merida wouldn't choose to stay in Arendelle, where she was so happy? She had three brothers to take the throne, she could do as she wanted.

 

_This is her home. She wants to stay._

 


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter 21**

 

… **..**

 

Late autumn brought the beginnings of the winter chill to the borders of Arendelle, and the country's farmers were finishing up their harvesting and filling their granaries when Arendelle's high council decided it was high time they hosted a harvest ball.

 

Any and all parties had been tiptoed around since the notorious coronation incident. They had a yule celebration the year after, and they had celebrated Anna's birthdays and her official engagement to Kristoff. Visiting traders were allowed to celebrate their national holidays in the open market and the local townspeople held spring festivals and summer fetes without any input from the royal family or the council. Elsa was perfectly happy with this.

 

“Anna can host it,” she told Holm, who had been sent to speak to her. “She'd be delighted to.”

 

Holm grunted under his breath (as she knew he would) and shook his head.

 

“You have not been seen properly in public for far too long, your highness,” he told her sternly. “There are rumours amongst the townspeople that you are on your deathbed.”

 

Elsa groaned into her hands, mostly to get on Holm's nerves. Of all of her advisors, she found him the most irritating.

 

“I dispelled the early snows on the balcony just last week. I looked healthy enough then, right? No reason to throw a ball....”

 

“It's not just for the benefit of the townspeople,” he continued. “Our foreign trade officials would like to speak to you outside of office, and some royal visitors would do wonders for your public image...”

 

“Is my public image suffering then?” she asked snidely.

 

He didn't answer, just stared her down.

 

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled. “Throw the damn ball. I'll sign whatever you need me to.”

 

…..

 

“I know it doesn't make any sense,” she explained to Merida later. “Don't focus on the name. It's just a big party.”

 

“Why don't you people just make new words when you need them?” Merida grumbled, idly tracing circles on the sheets.

 

“Take it up with the linguists,” Elsa told her. “It's a large gathering of people and we have to attend, that's all you need to know.”

 

“I know why _you_ have to attend,” Merida shot back. “Why do I have to?”

 

“By royal decree?” Elsa offered.

 

“You're not my queen.”

 

“True,” Elsa nodded, flopping back against the pillows. “But it's going to be an ordeal for me as it is. If you were there it would be at least a little more bearable.”

 

“That's black-....black-something....”

 

“Blackmail,” Elsa corrected. “Yes, it is. Is it working?”

 

“Fine,” Merida shrugged. “I'll go.”

 

“Marvelous. You'll be seeing the dressmaker in the morning.”

 

“Awfully sure of yourself, aren't you?”

 

Elsa didn't reply, just kissed her, and that was that.

 

…..

 

The doors were opening to the main ballroom, and she'd been wearing her heavy cloak for less than an hour and already she felt the strain in her shoulders. From under her window she could hear Anna's chirpy voice greeting the visitors. Elsa sighed; it was going to be a long night.

 

There was a gentle knock on the chamber door.

 

“Come in,” she groaned, and the person obliged. Elsa turned to greet them, and instantly felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.

 

She'd long suspected the royal seamstress, who spoke about ten words a year and had a permanent frown etched on her face, had a soft spot for Merida. She didn't complain as much as Elsa or fidget as much as Anna, and was perfectly fine standing on a chair in her underwear stoically being stabbed with pins.

 

The woman had clearly gone out of her way to make Merida look as stunning as possible, tossing out the customary velvet bodice and painted silk for sapphire-blue silk chiffon with gold embroidery. The back of the gown was high enough to cover her scars and dipped teasingly low in the front, and a gold brocade sash nipped in her waist. The skirt wasn't overly full, but floated with every step. To top it off, the royal dresser had pulled her hair to one side, wrapped it in gold cord and set small gold flowers into the curls.

 

“What?” Merida shrugged awkwardly, and Elsa realized she'd been staring in silence for who knew how long.

 

“Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “You...you look beautiful...”

 

Merida chuckled and went pink in the cheeks, fiddling with the end of her hair.

 

“It's a bit fancy for my liking...” she mumbled. “But it's not too tight, at least.”

 

“Which is more than I can say for this,” Elsa laughed, tugging at the closure on her cloak. “I feel like a cart horse lugging this thing along behind me.”

 

“I thought you were going to make a dress?” Merida asked, dropping lightly into a chair in front of the fire to warm her feet. “Like your ice gowns?”

 

“It's not proper,” Elsa answered. “I have to wear the royal emblem at public functions, and it never lasts when I try to make it in ice. It splinters too quickly.”

 

Merida laughed softly and rolled her eyes, but didn't comment. Adjusting her collar one last time and smoothing a stray hair back into her rolled braid, Elsa reached out a hand to pull her to her feet.

 

“Follow me downstairs in ten minutes,” Elsa told her. “I have to be formally announced.”

 

Merida took her chin in her hand and kissed her on the cheek softly.

 

“Good luck,” she said, and then she was gone.

 

…..

 

Two hours into the ball, and the ache in Elsa's shoulders was matched by a climbing ache in her jaw from holding her smile in place. She'd been greeting dignitaries and visiting royals at a rate of one every five minutes and trying desperately to remember who they all were, and it was exhausting.

 

Anna had finished her royal duty some time ago, and was freely sweeping across the ballroom with a stumbling Kristoff, rather too close for comfort. Elsa raised a reproachful eyebrow at her, but was met with a rebellious clenched jaw and hand gesture.

 

 _I know what you've been up to, you don't get to talk about my love life anymore!_ She could almost hear her say from across the room.

 

She hadn't seen Merida at all, and it concerned her. There were objectively more beautiful women in the ballroom (though to Elsa's eyes Merida outshone them all) but she looked different to everyone else, and looking so polished as she did this night was bound to attract unwanted male attention. That little uneasy sickness at the pit of her stomach grew as she watched handsome young men mill about the room, sneaking glances at any unaccompanied young woman.

 

“Cousin Elsa!” a soft, musical voice trilled. “It's wonderful to see you again.”

 

She started as a small hand landed on her shoulder, and was pulled away apologetically. She stared into the enormous doll-like green eyes of the woman in front of her, who was nervously biting her lip.

 

“Cousin Rapunzel,” she said, smiling genuinely this time. “I'm sorry, I was distracted. I almost didn't recognize you.”

 

Princess Rapunzel of Corona wasn't truly a cousin; their royal lines had been connected by marriage over three hundred years before but the two women hadn't a single drop of blood in common. Still, they and other royal families with close alliances used the term 'cousin' interchangeably to denote how close they were.

 

And indeed, Rapunzel looked quite different. Elsa had seen her briefly at the coronation, and she and her husband had been whisked out of the country over the land bridge when Elsa went on her rampage, she had not seen either of them since. Rapunzel's short, spiky brown hair was now past her shoulders and a silky-smooth golden, only brown at the tips.

 

She touched her hair, a nervous gesture.

 

“It's been a long time, I know,” she said. “The blonde coming back was unexpected, there's no real magic left in it but still...”

 

All of the royal families had been told and retold about how the infant princess had been stolen from her crib because of the strong magic she possessed. Elsa had been warned to keep the nursery windows locked at night, to never sneak out of her bed, to always stay within sight of the palace staff, with this tale on everyone's lips. Some of the maids had gone further in their tales, said that the baby had been devoured by the witch, that she'd had her entrails carved out to make potions, that she was taken to be raised in the swamps by toads and eels, more creature than human.

 

Still, there were nights that Elsa wondered if she herself would be better off in the clutches of a woods witch, raised to revel in her magic, casting snow and ice far from the reach of human eyes. Who was to say Rapunzel's abductor had only the worst in mind for her? But then, Rapunzel had returned as a young woman, unharmed as far as anyone could see, and settled into her role as a princess as though she had never been taken.

 

The same could not be said for her husband, a commoner named Eugene something-or-other, who had to publicly sign away any claim to the throne before he could even propose to her. The rumour mill had pegged him as a petty thief and charlatan who had taken advantage of the young princess's naivete to get himself a kingdom. Elsa couldn't say for sure what the truth was; the few times she had seen him, he looked uncomfortable and strained in royal company. However, Rapunzel marrying a man from a humble background had paved the way for Anna's engagement to Kristoff, and for better or worse he made Anna happy.

 

“Where is Eugene tonight?” Elsa asked casually. Normally, he was glued to Rapunzel's side at these functions.

 

“He went out to the balcony for some air,” Rapunzel told her. “He got through about thirty meet-and-greets before he gave up.”

 

“If only we could call it quits so soon,” Elsa quipped, and they shared a quiet, conspiratorial laugh.

 

“When is Anna going to set a date for her wedding?” Rapunzel asked. “Eugene shouldn't be the only royal spouse to suffer.”

 

“It's complicated,” Elsa told her. “The advisor's council are dragging their heels on the paperwork, and Anna keeps skipping the meetings...”

 

“It's such a lot of fuss to be with the one you love,” Rapunzel sighed. “I almost envy you, Elsa. Things might have been much simpler if my country told me to stay unwed.”

 

“Well, that has its own problems,” Elsa told her, feeling a sharp pain in her heart. Marrying a commoner was messy, marrying another woman was unheard of. Although....

 

“You were the first, weren't you?” Elsa said, linking Rapunzel's arm with her own and tugging her towards a quiet alcove. “To marry someone with Eugene's background?”

 

“Sort of,” Rapunzel said with a slow blink. This was the longest time they had ever spent talking to each other. “The first princess. There were kings before me who married widows and kept their crowns...and those that married mistresses, but they had to abdicate. We had to read up on them before we could get engaged.”

 

“Who objected the most?” Elsa prodded. “Did it cause a lot of problems?”

 

“Well, my parents were fine with it,” she said. “They were just happy to have me back alive, whatever the circumstances....most of Corona's people took a public vote and were fine with it too....the noble families made a big fuss because they had a lot of sons they wanted to push as marriage prospects....but in the end the one who objected most was Eugene.”

 

“What?” Elsa spluttered. “Why?”

 

“He always said he felt I was too good for him,” Rapunzel said quietly, stroking the ends of her hair. “When they said he had no claim to the throne, he was relieved. He wanted me to be happy....but to be really happy I needed him to stay by my side, and so here we are.”

 

“That makes sense,” Elsa hummed. It could be done....somehow, she could find a way. Whatever objections her council and people could have to her marrying another woman, the marriage would have no children to pass her powers to, and Merida was a royal in her own right...what was the difference, really?

 

Just then, Rapunzel was tugged away by Anna to tackle the buffet together. All of the attending guests were spread out, eating and mingling and dancing. Finally, she could escape to the balcony for some fresh air herself.

 

As she approached the thick velvet curtains separating the balcony from the hall, she heard familiar laughter mixed with a man's low drone. Pulling back the drape, her stomach dropped the same way it had when she caught Meena talking to Merida.

 

Rapunzel's roguishly handsome husband was perched on the balustrade, telling some grand story to Merida, all expressive limbs and cheeky half-smile. Merida was enthralled, leaning in and nodding along and laughing at his dramatic flourishes.

 

It was irrational to feel this sudden, heated jealousy. Eugene was a married man, and Merida wasn't interested in men as far as Elsa knew. But to see them both together like this, comfortable and relaxed in each other's company.....Elsa had never seen the man relaxed full stop....it put her on edge. She breathed deep, trying to keep her ice under control. She sent it upwards, towards the roof. At least up there it could be blamed on the approaching winter.

 

“What's going on here then?” Elsa said, plastering her friendly smile on her face.

 

“Oh, your highness,” Eugene straightened up, visibly tense once again. “I was just talking to this young lady....”

 

“Princess Merida,” Elsa corrected, enjoying how he suddenly went pale.

 

“Princess?” he sputtered, looking over at Merida (and probably realizing he had been massively inappropriate.)

 

Merida just shrugged.

 

“Yes, well, I was just telling her some stories of things I did before I was married...”

 

“Have you been in here long? I think your wife might be looking for you,” Elsa told him smoothly.

 

“Yeah, okay,” he laughed nervously. “See you around....your highness. Highnesses.”

 

He scurried out as fast as he could. Elsa took his place on the balustrade beside Merida, who was sitting up against the marble gargoyle and didn't seem annoyed that her companion had left so suddenly.

 

“Why are you hiding out here?” Elsa asked.

 

“People keep asking me to dance,” Merida told her. “I can't dance. Especially in these shoes.”

 

“Nobody asks me to dance anymore,” Elsa sighed. “It's quite a relief, actually. I used to just send them off to Anna instead, now they go straight to her without asking me at all.”

 

“What if I asked you?” Merida teased. “Would you send me off to Anna?”

 

“No,” Elsa said, smiling sadly. “If I could, you'd be my one exception.”

 

Maybe they could dance at their wedding, she thought but did not dare say. Maybe they could have a wedding. Maybe they could be together, with no problems keeping them apart.

 

Once upon a time, a princess marrying a commoner was unheard of. Rapunzel had been the first. Elsa could also be a first. If they accepted her choice, why not Elsa's?

 

…..

 

As the ball was winding down, Elsa ended up on the flat platform roof, lying face down in the snow that had gathered up there. It was late enough that her absence wasn't that notable, but the dancing music was still playing and there were still a crowd on the ballroom floor. If she looked up, she could see their shadows whirling against the snow.

 

The trapdoor to the platform roof creaked open and Elsa heard someone pulling themselves out into the night air, shivering with the cold. The person tiptoed over beside her and sank down into the snow. Elsa turned over onto her back, looking up into Merida's face peering down at her.

 

“Were you asleep up here?” she asked.

 

“No, just resting,” Elsa mumbled. “You're going to ruin your dress, sitting in the snow like that.”

 

“I probably won't be wearing it again, right?” she said. “The dressmaker makes a new one for everything...”

 

She was holding the shoes that had been tripping her up all evening, and she tossed them off of the roof as hard as she could. They both watched them drop down in a copse of trees.

 

“Was that necessary?” Elsa drawled.

 

“I'll get them in the morning,” Merida replied. “Anyway, now that they're gone, I can dance with you.”

 

“What?” Elsa said, sitting up. “Here?”

 

“Why not? No-one can see us from here. And the music's still playing...”

 

“I thought you said you can't dance....”

 

“That's what I told them. I can, I just wouldn't,” Merida explained. “Unless it's with you.”

 

There were times when Elsa woke up at night, spent evenings staring into the fire, tuned out of meetings because she was sick with worry that Merida simply did not care about Elsa the way Elsa cared about her. There was always the lingering fear that this was just a nice way to pass the time for her, a bit of fun. But then there were times like now, when she just _knew_ it wasn't all as one-sided as she feared it was. Nobody could ever make Merida do something she didn't want to do without a fight.

 

As she clambered to her feet, dropping her heavy cloak out of the way, the snow that had built on the roof was quickly thawing into water and trickling down from the eaves like summer rain. She curtseyed, stiff and suddenly awkward, and Merida copied her more lazily though she'd never quite mastered curtsying.

 

Elsa took her hand and pulled her close, winding an arm around her waist the way men usually held the women. But the first few steps were clumsy, she'd only ever been taught to dance with men and didn't know how to lead, and Merida didn't know how to follow. After having her feet stepped on for a third time, Merida yanked her forward until they each had a hip pressed against each other, an arm around her shoulder and hands entwined.

 

The music faded underneath them, and the shadows of the people in the ballroom grew smaller and smaller. They spun in circles together, half-dizzy and giggling. Merida's skirt caught droplets of water from the ground and tossed them into the air to shimmer in the moonlight.

 

It was all Elsa had ever wanted. It was perfect.

 

….

 


	22. Chapter 22

All or Nothing

 

Chapter 22

 

A quick author's note: to anyone who has asked, please don't worry, I have not forgotten this fic and it will be finished. Since the start of the year things have been very busy for me, but I have a lot more free time over the summer so I'm hoping to update more regularly.

 

On that note, I'd ask you that if you enjoy the story to please review, even a short one. They really help to keep me motivated and to find time to work on my writing, each and every one means a lot to me. Thank you for sticking with me so far.

 

…..

 

“Awk-ross,” Elsa tried, knowing it was wrong even before the word left her mouth.

 

“No,” Merida mumbled, distractedly. “Softer in the throat. _Ocras.”_

 

She sounded half-asleep, and indeed it was past midnight. Elsa's idea of having a nice relaxing bath together in her marble tub was working a little too well. The bath wasn't big enough for them both, but with Merida's back against the slope and Elsa lying back on her chest with her legs dangling out over the other end it was quite cosy.

 

“Osh-russ,” she tried again.

 

“That's too soft.”

 

“I quite think your people made up this language to confuse outsiders,” Elsa teased, winding a lock of Merida's hair around her finger and letting it unfurl itself.

 

“ _Fear Foghlamtha_ managed well enough,” Merida yawned.

 

“Yes, well, Myohenese is even more difficult,” Elsa muttered. “Their alphabet has over 600 characters.”

 

Abruptly, Merida's body seemed to wake up beneath Elsa, and with a sinking stomach she realized her mistake.

 

“Did I say he was from Myohen?” Merida asked. “We don't know where he was from....”

 

Panicking a little but trying to keep calm, Elsa filtered the rising cold in her fingertips away from the bathwater towards the floor, disguising it as a stretch.

 

“I guessed,” she said with a feigned casual laugh. “Most scholars are from Myohen, they travel all over the world so often. I imagine one must have gotten into trouble and ended up on some mysterious shore.”

 

Thankfully, Merida seemed to accept this. Elsa felt weak with relief.

 

“If you think that's bad,” she started, trying to change the subject without looking too suspicious, “Corona once had a language that was a hybrid of three others. It was awfully confusing before they switched over to Dellian.”

 

“Why did they do that?” Merida asked, the sleep creeping back into her voice.

 

“The last full Coronese king died with no heirs in the Southern Crusades,” Elsa answered. “The distant cousin they tossed onto the throne was raised in Sangonelle, and the princess he married was from Nullarty. Converting to Dellian was just easier for everyone.”

 

“Your cousin is from Corona, isn't she?” Merida asked.

 

“Yes, she's the crown princess.”

 

“The one who went missing?”

 

Anna had probably told her the story.

 

“Yes,” she said. “Thank goodness they finally found her when they did. She was their only heir.”

 

“Why didn't they have any other children?” Merida asked.

 

Elsa had asked that same question when she was younger, and her nursemaid at the time mumbled something about the queen being too sad to have any more babies. She didn't realize until she was older that infertility was a plague amongst the royal families, the Corona line in particular. Carrying Rapunzel had nearly killed Corona's queen, and even after the magic flower had been given to her she was no longer able to bear a living child. And of course Elsa's mother had her own issues with the daughters she had borne....

 

“Our royal bloodlines make for rather delicate women,” she explained away, not wanting to go into all the details. “We don't tend to have big families.”

 

Merida whispered something under her breath in Gaelic, as she often did when something Dellian seemed silly or confusing or just _off_ to her. Elsa turned in the bath to press her face to Merida's breasts, kissing the tip of the left one fondly.

 

“You don't have such problems in Dunbroch, clearly,” she sighed.

 

“No heirs is no problem,” Merida told her. “They just find someone else to be king.”

 

“It's that simple?” Elsa laughed.

 

“Yes. The throne passes to the eldest child. If eldest child is no good, someone has to challenge him or her, and whoever wins keeps the throne.”

 

That _was_ a novel way of dealing with the succession issue.

 

“Why would anyone want the throne if they could be killed for it at any time?” Elsa puzzled. She knew Merida's people were fond of battle, but it seemed chaotic in theory...

 

“Nobody dies in challenge,” Merida told her. “Not on purpose anyway. Dad won seventeen challenges, three of them were against MacGuffin.”

 

Put that way, it seemed a lot more simple.

 

“He certainly earned his throne,” Elsa said weakly.

 

Merida nodded, but her jaw was tight and Elsa could practically _hear_ what she was thinking.

 

_Warrick cheated. He should have fought for the throne like a real king. Coward._

 

Elsa wanted to distract her, coax her into sex for solace, but she fought it back. Instead she wrapped her arms around her waist and pulled her as close as she could, feathering chaste kisses along her her breastbone.

 

…..

 

Winter was closing in fast, and it was a particularly bad one even by Elsa's standards. If she interfered, it would disrupt the balance of the climate for the rest of the year, but every day seemed to bring a new request from farmers, mayors, factories, merchants and lay people of every description. Finally she issued an ordinance that Arendelle go into lockdown until the worst of the snows had passed. Production would cease, food from the granaries would be distributed on a weekly basis and any and all travel had to be kept to a minimum.

 

Secretly, Elsa was thrilled. Lockdown meant more time spent in her study and bedroom, as it was more efficient to keep the large drafty ballrooms and conference rooms locked and unheated. It meant more time for slipping back and forth through the sally port, at any hour of the day or night.

 

Their lovemaking, which had up to this point been quiet and a touch frenzied, became a lot more indolent, more tactile. There were days when the only movement Merida made from the bed was to duck behind it when someone knocked with Elsa's meals. There were also days when Elsa didn't see her at all, and the absence was a bone-deep ache, like something had been carved out of her.

 

Anna joined her for dinner in her study every now and then, making a point of not talking about Elsa and Merida's relationship. Even something relatively innocent, like noticing that the wool on Anna's skirt was thinner than that of Merida's was shut down.

 

“I don't want to hear it,” Anna muttered, stirring her stew with sharp irritated movements.

 

“I just want to know if the dressmaker's...”

 

“I said, I don't want to hear it!”

 

“Anna, don't be childish,” Elsa chided.

 

“Sorry, not wanting to know all the details of your sex life....your _illegal_ sex life....is childish now, is it?”

 

“For God's sake, Anna, it's just a bloody question about skirt material,” Elsa snapped.

 

“And how close you had to get to notice a difference,” Anna retorted.

 

“Are you really going to do this with everything I ask you about? Merida is part of my life, I can't just _not_ talk about her....”

 

“I don't care,” Anna growled low. “It doesn't matter what you say to me, but you're getting careless. It's just me now, but how long do you think you can keep this a secret? Someone's going to notice sooner or later!”

 

A shiver ran down Elsa's spine. Anna was right. They had been careless, especially since the lockdown. There were many times they came close to being caught, and just laughed it off like it was a joke.

 

Merida scoffed when Elsa told her they would have to be more careful, but she did as she was told. She came through the sally port only at night, as she had done before, and kept her voice down. But having that little bit of freedom to act as she wanted and having it snatched away again made Elsa sullenly angry. It made her realize how fragile their whole arrangement was.

 

She wanted nothing more at this time than to be challenged for the throne, as Dunbroch's rulers were. She could fight with her ice and lose. A stronger, smarter, more suitable ruler could take Arendelle's throne. She could leave Arendelle and be with Merida, wherever Merida wanted to be.

 

Even fantasizing about it, an idle thought, it was depressingly clear that would never happen. Arendelle's throne was hers, more than Merida ever would be.

 

…..

 

That sullen anger had been building as the winter winds raged on, and she took to wandering the mostly-empty castle to soothe her nerves. Occasionally she caught sight of Kristoff jogging to the kitchen from his quarters in the base of the castle, or Anna cycling through the empty ballrooms in her winter cloak. Maids and household staff hurried around their tasks, trying to get back to the warm kitchen hearth before nightfall.

 

Increasingly, she noticed higher-level staffers talking to Merida, the steward in particular, and the captain of the guard. They were both young men, mid-twenties, and although Elsa was sure Merida was interested in nothing more than polite conversation during the boring seclusion she was less sure of the men's intentions. They would not dare be so familiar with a member of the royal family, but in their eyes Merida was a refugee, albeit a noble one.

 

She watched them from the upper balustrade, the captain saying something that made Merida snort with laughter, the man visibly glowing from her attention. That spike of anger grew as she watched him escort her away somewhere, down the hall.

 

_He has no reason to talk to her. No reason to even **look** at her. _

 

When she lifted her hands from the balustrade, it was covered with ice. The structure underneath was full of gradually spreading cracks.

 

…..

 

She found Merida in the library, wrapped in half a dozen blankets on the window box, a couple of books open around her. But she wasn't looking at the books. She was staring out the window, frowning.

 

“Merida?” Elsa called, and Merida jumped.

 

“ _In ainm Dé!”_ she shouted in Gaelic. “You gave me a fright...”

 

“I'm sorry,” Elsa apologized, closing the distance and kissing her head lightly. “I didn't mean to sneak up on you.”

 

“It's fine,” she mumbled, stretching under the blankets. “I was distracted...”

 

“What were you looking at?”

 

Elsa peered out the window herself, but it was an endless expanse of inky black and swirling white. The same thing they'd seen every day for close to two months.

 

“I thought I saw something,” Merida said. “Must have imagined it.”

 

She was reluctant to say what she thought she had seen, so Elsa didn't press her. She sat across from her in the window box, picked up a book and poked her own feet under the blanket nest to rub gently against Merida's.

 

But when she looked up from her book again, Merida was still staring out of the window.

 


	23. Chapter 23

**All or Nothing**

 

**Chapter Twenty Three**

 

Please excuse yet another delay on this story, I had to take a trip and I'm back now. Services will resume.

 

Note: This fic is far from over. Please do not let the events of this chapter and the ones after put you off the story.

 

…..

 

For all that Anna's relationship with Elsa was frosty (now slowly thawing, thank goodness), she and Merida were still on good terms. They spent long winter evenings in Anna's parlour together, drinking hot cider in front of the fire and laughing so much and so loudly Elsa could hear them from her office.

 

It irritated her, just a little. She couldn't begrudge Merida a friend in a foreign nation (though there was that little sting that Elsa wasn't enough for her, somehow) but it still felt like Anna was being childish about the whole affair.

 

She wondered if Anna had told Kristoff anything.

 

“Of course not,” Anna hissed when asked. “It's not gossip, for God's sake...”

 

“Maybe you should tell him,” Elsa replied coolly. “He is going to be a member of the royal household soon. He should know that his future sister-in-law is an abomination.”

 

Anna rolled her eyes.

 

“For the last time, you _know_ that's not what I think,” she said snippily. “You might as well go have torrid love affairs with all the chambermaids for all I care, whatever, no big deal. It's that you had to have _this_ affair.”

 

“You can't control who you fall in love with,” Elsa retorted. “You know that better than anyone.”

 

“Oh, I do,” Anna laughed, tapping on a stack of papers on Elsa's desk. “If I'd known it was this complicated to marry him....but the heart wants what it wants.”

 

“Yes, it does.”

 

“I don't blame you for falling in love, or her...”

 

_Does she love me? Has she said so to you?”_

 

“...but this is going to end badly. I can feel it.”

 

Said like that, it was like a prophecy. She just had no way of knowing just how soon it might come true.

 

….

The cold spell lifted, and although there was still powdery snow on the ground the markets re-opened and the traders went right back to selling their wares. Merida was out of the castle gates as soon as she got the all-clear; she had been happy enough to stay in the castle during the heavy snows, but she was a creature of the outdoors above all else.

 

Elsa wasn't expecting her back until near nightfall. She jumped when Merida clattered into her office before midday.

 

“I saw a wisp,” she gasped, wild-eyed. Her cloak was half-off, still clinging to one shoulder.

 

“What?” Elsa said quizzically. She handed her a cup of water, Merida looked out of breath.

 

“I saw a wisp,” she repeated after gulping down the water. “At the spice merchant's stall. It was waiting for me. I saw it in the snow before, but I couldn't get to it.”

 

Elsa knew what a wisp was; she'd seen flickers of them in Merida's memories, and heard Merida speak of them more than once. Still, she played ignorant. Something about the wisps, little creatures that already knew your future and appeared just to beckon you in some vague direction, frightened her.

 

“What would a wisp be doing here?” she said with a warm chuckle, as if indulging some small child's stories.

 

“It's here to lead me back,” Merida answered, her breath evening out. She sounded certain, dead-set. “That's why I've been here so long. It was waiting for the right time to lead me back.”

 

Elsa felt the slow trickle of ice run up her spine, through her blood, out through her fingertips to crackle on the wood of the desk in front of her, with every word Merida spoke. She had been there for almost three years. They had been together for only a few months.

 

She had always known it would end, some day, and it would break her heart. She didn't expect it to be so _soon._

 

Merida was still talking, about the wisp, about how the spice merchant was leaving soon for the coast and had offered to take her with his caravan, maps and winter clothes and weapons and sending Lua from new outposts....

 

“Stop,” Elsa said, holding up a shaking hand. “Just...stop.”

 

Merida trailed off, looking confused. As if she didn't _know...._

 

“It's midwinter,” she said. “The ports are frozen over. The mountains are snowed in. And aside from the travel conditions, you don't know these spice merchants and if you think I'm going to let you wander off with complete strangers...”

 

“I do know them,” Merida said with a frown. “Cosimo and Giancamo Belloza. From Losanta.”

 

_How long has she known them?_

 

“Be that as it may,” Elsa continued, a note of ice creeping into her voice. “Jumping across countries on the whim of some creature you haven't seen in years isn't just dangerous, it's downright insane. The spice merchants will be going East, towards Dionhae. That's as far from Dunbroch as you can get.”

 

Merida shrugged, infuriatingly casual.

 

“The witch said I would leave Dunbroch, make a powerful ally and return stronger. The wisp lead me out of Dunbroch, it's trying to lead me now. If that's Dionhae, so be it.”

 

There was no clear thought, no plan, not even a vague idea of what was going to happen, but Merida was willing to drop everything and follow this... _demon..._ off to wherever. It was infuriating.

 

_And there was that little stab of hurt that Elsa had always imagined herself to be that prophecized powerful ally, despite Arendelle's lack of a formidable army and a shaky economy built around good relationships with all their neighbours. Merida had never seen her that way, she knew now._

 

“You don't speak Dionhese,” she retorted, trying and failing to keep the building anger out of her voice. “Or even standard Rohiman, for that matter...”

 

“The Bellozas do,” Merida countered. “I can pick it up on the way. I did fine with Dellian, didn't I?”

 

“The spice road is notoriously dangerous, especially for women,” Elsa continued. “Slave traders from the South pass through all the time, not to mention bandits...”

 

“So do mercenaries,” Merida shrugged. “All the caravans have decent guard. And I can protect myself if it comes to that.”

 

It sounded like Merida _had_ given it a lot of thought, and that just made Elsa more fearful.

 

“Look, I know why you're worried,” Merida said, softening a little as she reached for Elsa's hand. “But we both knew I was going to have to leave some time. It doesn't mean we won't ever see each other again...once I've got my husband's head on a pike, who knows....”

 

She was still talking, but Elsa couldn't hear her over the pounding of her heart. She knew what this meant. Merida would leave and find someone else and never come back, might never even _think_ of Elsa again unless a fall of snow triggered a memory in her. Or she'd win back her kingdom and return, but the ocean between Dunbroch and Arendelle would take days to cross, and with each day spent away from her she would grow more distant. Even now, a single day away from her filled Elsa with agonizing longing.

 

“You can't,” she blurted out.

 

Merida pulled her hand away sharply, frowning.

 

“My brothers have been stuck on an island for three years,” she said, quietly but firmly. “My people have been in hiding for three years. I've been waiting for the wisp to lead me back, I would never have stayed so long if I hadn't. I have to go.”

 

The ice bubbled in Elsa's blood, rushing to her fingertips.

 

“No. I forbid it,” she growled.

 

Now Merida stood, pushed back her chair, cheeks flushed pink with anger and, to Elsa's eyes, lovelier than ever.

 

“You're not my queen,” she told her as she marched to the door. “You can't stop me!”

 

“ **Yes, I can!”**

 

The cold flew from her fingers with a burst, coating the entire door in a layer of thick glassy ice just as Merida's hand was about to touch the door handle. Merida drew back her hand with a shocked little gasp, and for a fleeting moment Elsa worried that a stray shard had caught her, as it had Anna so long ago.

 

But in the next moment, Merida had taken the fire poker from the corner and broken through the ice, and with one last furious glance back at Elsa she was gone.

 

As Elsa left her office, the captain of the guard was watching Merida's form retreat down the hallway. He stood to attention when Elsa cleared her throat.

 

“Your highness?”

 

“At ease,” she said, suddenly drained of all energy. “I need to issue an edict.”

 

“Of course, your highness.”

 

“Princess Merida of Dunbroch is hereby confined to quarters, for her own safety.”

 

The captain shot a concerned glance at his nearby troops, concern that was echoed back.

 

“I will spread the word, your highness. Specifics.”

 

“Place a guard at her door and her window, she is permitted to visit the library and the west tower to feed her falcon, but beyond that she must be accompanied at all times. And she cannot leave the castle until further notice.”

 

It was an easy area to fortify. Elsa wasn't naive enough to think Merida wouldn't attempt to break through any windows she could access, or scale a wall, or shimmy down a pipe. All she needed to do was keep her confined for a few days, until she came to her senses.

 

Or just until the spice caravans left without her.

 

…..

 

The next few days were hard.

 

Elsa had expected ( _hoped)_ that Merida would come to her begging her to lift the house arrest. She could reason with her after the heat of the argument had died down and realize that she was being foolish to throw her life away on the whim of some mysterious spirit. They would make love and the whole ordeal would be put to rest.

 

She should have known better.

 

Ceilts were a race of people beholden to the spirits, they trusted them implicitly while having no idea what motive their spirits were working towards. Not to mention the idea of Merida begging for anything was about as unlikely as the Dellian council approving a marriage between them.

 

She had reacted to confinement with a fury that was frightening. The guards had had to chase her across the courtyard more than once after she'd slipped out a window or across a gutter, and it took six full-grown men to get her back inside. When Elsa froze the shutters on her window two feet thick, she spent hours chipping away at them with the butter knife she'd saved from her breakfast tray. Almost the entire garrison was stationed around possible exit routes.

 

When Elsa tried to talk to her, she refused to speak Dellian, only Gaelic. Elsa was quite sure she was being called all sorts of horrible names and cursed to hell and back, but she insisted after every time that it was for Merida's own good. This was usually met with an angry snort and Merida slamming the door in her face.

 

Anna was angry too, not quite as furious as Merida ( _as if anyone could be)_ but angry enough.

 

“This is a new low,” she growled when she first heard. “Everyone is going to know what's going on. _Everyone!_ And you might as well have thrown her in the dungeon, you know she hates being cooped up inside! Don't you care?”

 

“It's just for a little while,” Elsa told her wearily. “What else can I do?”

 

“Anything but this!” Anna retorted. “Seriously, what's your end goal here? You're going to make her hate you, and that'll just make her want to leave even more! You can't lock her up forever!”

 

A little slice of madness, at the deepest corner of Elsa's mind, whispered to her.

 

_Yes, I can._

 

If she couldn't keep her in the castle, she'd find another way. Her palace on the mountain. It was remote, almost inaccessible. She could make it stronger, higher, so that no man or woman could get in.

 

Or out.

 

 

 

 


End file.
